Shannon Cabral
For this assignment I chose to consume one hour of social media, in particular, Twitter. In the past year I have tried to dramatically cut down on my social media usage, so at first I thought it might be challenging to scroll mindlessly through Twitter for an hour, however I was wrong. At first all I seemed to notice was funny things my friends had retweeted, a couple comments about the upcoming college football season and bunch of ads for Grubhub. But once I shifted from my traditional feed to what was trending on Twitter I suddenly encountered a lot of current political events. The most glaring one was news about the Texas mass shooting that had happened that day. There were thousands of posts from news programs, politicians, as well as concerned citizens, all providing their take on what had gone on in Odessa that day. I spent easily twenty to thirty minutes of the hour learning about the details of the shooting and reading through responses to it. So, in my hour I gathered information about a mass shooting, whose predicted to win college football (according to my highly underqualified and bias friends) and that I could get free delivery on my first Grubhub order.
For my second hour I spent it outside in my friend Paige’s hammock, and she joined me after I had spent an hour alone. I brought with me a journal to write down all the information I received, because I didn’t want to forgot it but I also didn’t want to have to use my phone. The first thing I noticed was the number of sounds around me. This was something I would do at the summer camps I used to teach, I would make all the kids be silent for one minute and have them count on their fingers how many sounds they heard. I thought it would be interesting for me to do, so I counted a number of insects I could hear, winds rustling leaves, a low flying airplane and the creak of the hammock. In total I noticed seventeen sounds, all of which I never typically would have noticed. Other information I received had to do with the weather, I could see a couple clouds rolling in and the temperature dropped slightly within my hour, hinting towards nighttime coming. Overall in my hour outside I really just became more self-aware and more aware of my surroundings. Little things like ants climbing the tree my hammock was secured to, or the group of ducks hanging out in the pond are all things I usually pay no attention to, but without any type of distraction they became very obvious.
In both my experiences I feel like I left more knowledgeable than when I went in. After my hour on Twitter it really became apparent to me that social media is the main way I receive news, which is bizarre because it’s so condensed and any one is able to comment on what is going on regardless if they are qualified. It also struck me as weird that I would say I use Twitter as a distraction, yet I also use it to stay up to date on all my news. While my hour outside made me realize how oblivious I usually am when I am outdoors. I rarely am by myself outside unless I am walking to class and even than there are hundreds of other students walking around me too. It made me want to seek out more time outside without media, and I hope I make the time more often to do it.