by Kevin Pointer Sr.
Most digital enthusiasts, digital skeptics, and self-respecting geckos would agree on one thing: that there is an ever evolving proliferation of user-generated digital data and smart devices in our retail-driven jungle of a world that you don’t have to hunt far in order to buy or upgrade. Geeeeesh, in today’s marketing world of user data capture, user personas, and user profiles business intelligence reconnaissance approaches like Facebook’s Pixel or Google Analytic embolden retail jungle giants and small company’s to find and come to you! Burrow over to and Amazon, eBay, or Best Buy and you will find the motherload from which to scratch your every consumer digital hardware, and ultimately, data itch. Trek just 1 or 2 kilometers — uh clicks — through the clearing you will experience the media mangrove that is the Apple Store. Here you will find a complete line of personalizable Apple “data ware” designed to literally not only to be an extension of yourself, but in an old school “Ask Jeeves” sort of way, to be “at your service”. The Apple ecosystem of products feature must have Apple watches laptops, and smartphones.
Some pundits have suggested that the abundance and over use of such technology and that smartphones, for example, have destroyed a generation. In her Atlantic article of the same name author Jean M. Twenge, for example, makes a cogent argument for this generational degradation assertion.
Other pundits, by direct contrast, have made the argument that such apprehension over the use and effects of smartphones and the associated effects of social media is overstated — that a generation is not, in fact, being subsequently destroyed. Still other pundits, such as the Harvard affiliated Iranian Iranian-Canadian “blog father”, Hossein Derakhshan, nostalgically point to an earlier web time frame where, unlike the teens in Jean M. Twenge’s studies, nobody would “destroy” themselves caring about things such as likes and re-shares. In Derakhshan’s The Web We have to Save commentary he essentially seems to lament, like presumably Twenge might, the fact that just the mere act of opening Twitter or Facebook on say a teen’s smartphone, their “dive deep” would already be picked for them! Nothing to detox from on the content side as there is little to no investment required!
My Experiment
Wow! Was it about to be over before it started? In no time it was already Wednesday, February 10, 2021 and this was only a week-long, educational experiment! Semi –panic!: Are we defining a week as 7 days or 5 days? Either way of course I would need TO START in order have enough time to collect my data and deliver! Importantly I would need to find and MASTER a data collection tool WELL ENOUGH for it to output some meaningful data that I could actually meaningfully INTERPRET! NO this was not a case of me giving up Facebook or Quora — It was only 5 days and I pretty much felt I could go cold turkey for only 5 days for one or both of these social media outlets …… My challenge, again, was more of finding a data collection tool that I could actually work with! That is where my anxiety laid and festered a bit. I actually already realized that one of the best data detox exercises for me was giving up my neurological, dopamine quest to always get to inbox zero. I was almost pre-disposed to move on from a potential inbox-related app Moment because its utility, its potential output wasn’t presented to me right away from its webpage. Therefore I quickly moved on to Rescue Time whose output was! Interestingly enough the team at Rescue Time characterize themselves as Deep Thinkers – which is inextricably connected to a philosophy of my educational course at hand as well as my Master’s Program in Interactive Media and Communications. Sold! Rescue Time it is! According to one reviewer Rescue Time is a lightweight desktop app, browser extension, and mobile app that tracks where you spend your time. As the day goes on, it rates your productivity based on how much time you’re spending on productive tasks versus unproductive ones, and puts that data into simple, well-designed charts. The screen shots below are representative of my experience to date with the Rescue Time during my 5-day detox.
My Findings /Conclusions
I toiled the first and 2nd day as my real goal was to see how the tool would output some meaningful data — any meaningful data. As I basically just stopped using my target social medial tool, Facebook, for all 5 days I would get the expected, daily predictable and check marked “Less than 1h on Social Networking” message each and every day of the 5- day trial. This is what I meant by my earlier rhetorical question under “The Experiment”: “Was it about to be over before it started?. The real value with Rescue Time, so far, seems my very limited ability to configure the tool to graphically break down for me where I was spending my time — I knew, however, from Day 1 it was not Facebook. So some selected insights were: Weds Day 1—My highest time spent was on MS Word and Adobe Acrobat. Thurs Day 2—My highest time spent was on MS Outlook and MS Word. This pattern alternated predictably until Friday and Saturday when, after work on both of those days my M.S. Publisher use shot way up. This large uptick was due to the fact that I began to document my quantitative data and experiences — over 4 and 5 hours, respectively as I worked to complete this Data Detox experiment. Overall I did not like having to focus on learning the tool, rather than focusing on shaping the experiment to track exactly what I wanted to track and how I wanted to track it. In an ideal word I would have liked to had live phone support to help me “cut to the chase”! Never-the-less, I think that I will actually consider buying a trial subscription to Rescue Time as I can see and sense that its potential can be unraveled. Cal Newport in chapter3 of his book, Deep Work is Rare, has said, relative to his contention that deep work is meaningful that, like a sword-making metal craftsman “you have to nudge it: slowly it breaks down: then you start to enjoy it. Brad Auerbach in his article Edward R. Tufte, Beautiful Evidence and Visual Explanations imparted a simple, but solid quote from the famous American statistician, professor emeritus of political science, statistics, and computer science at Yale University and also pioneer in the field of information design and data visualization. Tufte insightfully said “Reaching a conclusion is a firm human goal, but the data may not always support a conclusion”. With respect to my Data Detox experiment, I feel that these scholar’s statements are on point on both accords!
References
Denworth, L. (2019, November 1). Social media has not destroyed a generation. Retrieved February 15, 2021, from https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/social-media-has-not-destroyed-a-generation/
Derakhshan, H. (2019, September 12). The web we have to save. Retrieved February 15, 2021, from https://medium.com/matter/the-web-we-have-to-save-2eb1fe15a426
Newport, C. (2016). Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World. New York City, New York: Grand Central Publishing.
Twenge, J. T. (2018, March 19). Have smartphones destroyed a generation? Retrieved February 15, 2021, from https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/09/has-the-smartphone-destroyed-a-generation/534198/
