Thursday, January 16th, I woke up earlier than usual (about 6AM) to meet my parents for breakfast before work. I typically wake up with just enough time to get ready before I have to leave the house, so like usual, I had no spare time to browse the web or read the news before I was out the door.
At the breakfast table my mom had her phone out, telling me about the latest gossip she read on Facebook. My dad was scrolling through his Instagram feed to show me a picture my grandmother posted of her new garden. I don’t use my phone when I’m eating with others, so I engaged my parents in conversation to pass the time as we ate. Once we finished breakfast & I was on my way to work.
I work at Barnes & Noble, your typical fast-paced retail job. I get to work at 8:45AM, 15 minutes before my shift starts. I sat in the back office & started scrolling through Twitter. Rarely do I browse Twitter Moments or Trending Tags, I usually keep to my own timeline on Twitter. I saw a few linked news articles that I bookmarked to read later & then put my phone away to start my shift.
Time really got away from me at work so I ended up taking my lunch & my first break back to back. So around 2PM I grabbed my phone & opened Twitter back up to read the articles I had bookmarked. One of the links took me to an article from The New York Times & the other took me to article from Slate. Both covered political news regarding Trump’s impeachment & I found myself a little uninterested so I ended up only quickly scanning them. I spent the remaining 30 minutes of my lunch reading a book.
The real media consumption didn’t start until I was home from work at 6PM. I opened up my laptop, quickly checked if I had ASU assignments to be done & then I immediately clicked to YouTube from my bookmarks bar. I opened up a filmed podcast I’d been meaning to listen to & started making dinner. I sat down to eat & as the podcast was going I simultaneously began to scroll through Twitter, this time on my laptop in a separate tab. I clicked between my Twitter & YouTube tabs for about an hour & a half before cleaning up & sitting on the couch to watch Jeopardy on television. After Jeopardy I started up Disney+ & watched the last 2 episode of The Mandalorian. While I was watching, a friend texted me a link to a silly Buzzfeed article on puns which I clicked on but couldn’t open because it required the Apple News app which I had removed from my phone. After The Mandalorian season finale I got up to take a shower & get ready for bed. I listened to music downloaded onto my laptop during the process.
Once in bed I try to avoid screen time so I opened up a book & read until I was too tired to keep my eyes open any longer.
Most of my media consumption this day, & most days, is more about entertainment than anything else. Considering all the crazy news circulating right now regarding current affairs & global happenings, I haven’t been seeking out news or lingering on news for long, as it becomes too overwhelming for me. I interact with many people throughout the day & if someone mentions something that they saw on the news that morning, I may go online & seek it out later if I remember to, otherwise at the moment news isn’t something I consume with regularity.
As far as trusted media, the only truly trusted media I consumed this day were from The New York Times & Slate. Every other media source I would rank low on the credibility scale because they are either entertainment based like Disney+, or the content is created by the general public & I have not curated my feeds or timelines to be news based.
