Fagot 1

Dean Fagot
Dr. Steffen Guenzel
ENC 1101-0014
November 24th, 2014
Final Draft
How do I Write on a Daily Basis? Phone vs. Reading/Writing
Introduction
In Amanda Lenhart, Aaron Smith, Alexandra Rankin Macgill, and Sousan Arafehs
research study, Writing Technology, and Teens: Summary of Findings, she polls teens from
across the U.S. on a number of topics relating to electronic writing and academic writing.
Through her study she found some interesting statistics: first, 85% of teens engage at least
occasionally in some form of electronic personal communication, which includes text messaging,
sending email or instant messages, or posting comments on social networking sites. This fact
didnt surprise me at all, knowing all my friends participate in electronic personal
communication. Second, 50% of teens say their school work requires writing every day. Again
this did not surprise me considering the schoolwork I complete every day. Third, 94% of teens
use the internet to do research for school, 48% report doing so once a week or more often. This
piece of data is just a testament to how technological our world has gotten compared to past
generations who used libraries for the bulk of their research. These statistics alone describe the
generation Im growing up in very well. Im interested in two things: first, how I would compare
to the majority of teens my age. Second, how much time do I spend on my phone compared to
how much time I spend reading and writing.

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Methods
To answer these two questions I decided to keep a log for a whole week of every instance
I used my phone and every time I read or wrote. This is only a small sample of my life but I
believe it represents my average usages pretty well. Specifically, each day I kept track of the
time I used my phone, what I was using it for, and if I the reason I was using it was relevant. For
reading and writing I followed closely how much time I spent reading and writing, what I read
and wrote, what I was reading and writing for, and if what I was reading or writing was relevant.
Hopefully, the results would answer my questions.
Research
Below are the logs that I completed while tracking myself:
Phone
Day

Time

Uses

Relevance

Wednesday 3 hrs and 30 mins Social, academic, and games Semi-important

Thursday

3 hrs and 50 mins Social, academic, and games Semi-important

Friday

2 hrs and 30 mins Social, academic, and games Semi-important

Saturday

4 hours

Sunday

3 hrs and 30 mins Social, academic, and games Semi-important

Monday

3 hrs and 15 mins Social, academic, and games Semi-important

Tuesday

2 hrs and 45 mins Social, academic, and games Semi-important

Social, academic, and games Semi-important

Fagot 3

Reading and Writing

Day

Time

Uses

Relevance

Wednesday 5 hrs and 48 mins

Social, academic, and leisure Semi-important

Thursday

5 hrs and 11 mins

Social, academic, and leisure Semi-important

Friday

8 hrs and 46 mins

Social, academic, and leisure Semi-important

Saturday

3 hr and 21 mins

Social, academic, and leisure Semi-important

Sunday

5 hours and 6 mins Social, academic, and leisure Semi-important

Monday

5 hrs and 16 mins

Social, academic, and leisure Semi-important

Tuesday

7 hrs and 46 mins

Social, academic, and leisure Semi-important

As you can see the bulk of my time each day is spent either using my phone or reading
and writing. All of that time was used for these five categories: social, academic, research,
games, and leisure. Social pertains to texting, calling, social media, and anything of that sort.
Academic has to do with homework, note-taking, reading academic articles, and researching for
academic purposes. Games are the times I spend playing Tetris, word search, or other games that
I have on my phone. Leisure is the time I spend reading non-academic articles and writing for
pleasure. I classified the relevance of my phone time as semi-important because I waste a lot
of time on my phone doing unimportant things but I also use it for important tasks like calling to
pay bills, to schedule shifts for my job, to schedule meet up times with classmates to study, and
many others. I also classified the relevance of my reading and writing time as semi-important

Fagot 4
because I spend a lot of time reading pointless articles on the internet but I also use much of my
time reading and writing for academic purposes.
Analysis
There are 168 hours in one week. Lets say that I sleep seven hours a night which leaves
me with 119 hours a week to do with how I please. 23 hours and 20 minutes of my time will be
spent on my phone and 37 hours and 55 minutes of my time will be spent reading or writing. Put
together thats 61 hours and 15 minutes of my time spent on either one of these two things, thats
52% of my time.

Time

Phone

Reading/Writing

Other

Let me break this down a little bit further. I mainly have 3 different uses for my phone:
social, academic, and games. I use my phone for social activities 15 hours out of the week thats
a whopping 64% of my phone time. I use it for academic purposes about an hour and 55 minutes
a week, 8% of my phone time, which isnt surprising considering I complete most of my
academic tasks on my computer. Finally, I use my phone for games about 6 hours and 25
minutes a week, 28% of my phone time.

Fagot 5

Phone Time

Social

Academic

Games

I mainly spend my reading and writing time doing something related to one of three
things: social, academic, and leisure. I read and write on social media sites on my phone and on
the computer for 16 hours a week, 42% of my reading and writing time. I complete reading and
writing academic tasks for 14 hours and 55 minutes a week, 39% of my reading and writing
time. Lastly, I leisurely read and write for approximately 7 hours a week, 18% of my reading and
writing time.

Reading/Writing Time

Social

Academic

Leisure

Fagot 6
Mostly all the numbers were exactly where I thought they would be except for the
disparity between my time spent on social and my time spent on academic. I was very startled
that I spend so much time on social media compared to doing school. I guess I never realized
how much time I waste on social sites. This is something that both surprised and alarmed me. I
am basically wasting more than two hours of my day doing pointless stuff. I think I should spend
my time much more wisely.
Comparing myself to Lenhart et. alls research study, I found that my habits are very
similar to most people my age. First, the writers yielded evidence that showed, 85% of teens
engage at least occasionally in some form of electronic personal communication, which includes
text messaging, sending email or instant messages, or posting comments on social networking
sites. I am a part of that 85% as shown by my data, that I engage in electronic personal
communication many times every day. Second, their evidence brought to light that, 50% of
teens say their school work requires writing every day. Again I am part of that 50%, because
my data explains that I take part in some form of academic writing every day. Third, she explains
that, 94% of teens use the internet to do research for school, 48% report doing so once a week
or more often. I fall into both the 94% and the 48% because I do research for school on the
internet at least four or five days a week.
Discussion
As my results have shown, I am very similar to the average teenager spending much of
my time using technology. Teenagers have become increasingly more technologically dependent.
I spend half of my time during the week both on my phone and reading and writing. Where I

Fagot 7
think I need to change my habits is within my exorbitant amount of time spent on social media.
Its absolutely incredible that I am spending more time on social media each day than I am
reading and writing for academic purposes. Unfortunately, I never realized that until now. Im
glad that I caught myself through this simple assignment and I am endeavoring to change my
ways exponentially. Today, I have decided I am beginning to waste less time on social media.
Instead I am going to spend my time productively reading and writing to further my intellect.

Fagot 8
Works Cited
Lenhart, Amanda, Aaron Smith, Alexandra Rankin Macgill, and Sousan Arafeh. Writing,
Technology, and Teens: Sumary of Findings. Writing about Writing: a College Reader.
Boston: 2014, 2011. Pag. 215. Print.