Having started my blogs with my first ever encounter of a digital community, I figured that it would be nice to end with my most recent experience of the Digital in general. With the past two weeks have been an enormous rollercoaster, I think this is the perfect opportunity to look into both the positive and negative aspects of the Digital in my life.
What happened in the past weeks?
Being a second-year Japanstudies bachelor student, the last two weeks were crammed with paper deadlines, presentations, oral exams, and written exams. As if that doesn’t give enough stress, I also managed to get ill and accidentally drug myself with medicines (Instead of take 1 pill every 3 hours I read take 3 pills every 1 hour. I do not recommend trying this yourself, especially not while studying for your exams). Next to this I have to study but I feel like I am in no state to study stress, the second tight lockdown was announced. This cruelly crushed my last bit of motivation, namely a holiday filled with doing fun and relaxing stuff, and transformed it into a prospect of sitting inside for weeks yet again.
Everything combined….well I’ve been better…but that’s not the point right now! Let’s take a look at how the digital has influenced/helped me during these past two weeks.
Negative Aspects
I think that the biggest negative aspect of the digital can easily be called distraction. Now, I’m not the type to start an entire new Netflix series a few days before an exam or anything. When talking about distraction I mainly mean short distractions. The main culprits in this area are Wattpad and Tiktok. Wattpad is an app where people can write and share their own stories. I love reading romantic short-story fanfictions that are usually about 1000 to 3000 words long, and can thus be read within 10 minutes. Tiktok, which I have been using far too frequently ever since my Tiktok blog, is an app where people can watch short videos of their interests.
I don’t know how many times I caught myself telling myself ‘just one more story’ or ‘just five more minutes of Tiktok’. Those small amounts of time feel like nothing, I mean, studying from 15:30 till 17:30 or studying from 15:40 till 17:30, that doesn’t make a real difference. However, once you keep telling yourself that the next 5 minutes won’t make a difference, again and again, and again, then the problem starts. Before you know it’s 17:00 and you haven’t done a thing.
Positive Aspects
But of course, the digital is not all despair and distraction. When focusing on the more positive aspects of the digital, two apps come forward as well. One is Spotify, an app that can be used for listening to music. For me, studying while listening to music really helps to keep me focused. Because Spotify has such a large collection of songs, there is always one to fit my mood. When I am feeling super motivated, I play fast uplifting songs and when I am more tired but still wanna get some work done, I switch to relatively calmer songs. The second app is actually Whatsapp. Many probably see Whatsapp as a great distraction as well, but I found that it actually helped me. As one could read at the beginning of this blog, it was evident that I didn’t feel too great during the last two weeks. One thing that helped me was just talking about it with friends. Yea, they also felt frustrated about the lockdown situation. Yes, they were also stressed about that upcoming test. Some even offered advice on how to feel better. Many times, after having such conversations, I kinda felt revitalized and it helped me a lot to just keep my motivation alive.
Conclusion
Concluding, I think that, when handled with caution, any digital media platform could help you a lot when you are busy or having a hard time. Just try not to overuse it, or you will find yourself spending much more time on it than you had wished, and you end up having a harder time than you had before.
Side Note: While writing this blog post I have….
- Read 3 Wattpad stories
- Watched 1 Youtube Video
- Been on Tiktok for at least 10 minutes
Maybe I should start listening to my own advice for once….
Nice blog to end this course (more or less) with, Puck! Funny how everyone uses the digital in a different way. Personally I listen to music when I am relaxing and never while studying. When I listen to music when I am studying, I find myself singing and dancing in my room for half an hour. However, when there is a lot of noise around me, I tend to listen to Binaural Beats: Focus… It can not even be seen as ‘real’ music, but it is just sounds, I guess. Also, my biggest distraction and therefore for me a very negative aspect of the Digital, is WhatsApp. I HATE the fact that I use webWhatsApp, but I just can’t stop it. I am on WhatsApp the whole day and it feels way to easy to just check my WhatsApp for 5 times, while I am in the middle for example reading your blog. However, I totally understand what you mean with that you could still sort of “hang out” with your friends when you were ill and that is good to hear:)
Lastly, I think it is remarkable that we always give ourselves and others the advice to not use the Digital too much, but in the end never listen to our own advices… I guess, the fact that we keep saying it is already a good start?:)
I honestly think this may have been the most relatable blog post I have seen throughout the entire course. It takes me forever to complete assignments, even when they are completely easy and straight forward. I don’t know what it is, but if I have my phone nearby or I’m writing on my phone I just “need” to procrastinate. It’s really frustrating, especially when you know that you’re fully capable of completing what you need to do without distractions… it’s just hard. I also find myself checking my notifications on the dropdown bar for WhatsApp constantly even though the messages could be the most random conversations that I don’t need to pay attention to. I also had the same issue of illness – I’ve had about 3 horrible colds since the beginning of the semester and it seems like my attention span just shortens significantly while I’m sick, so TikTok and little messages on WhatsApp are the only thing that keep me entertained. You also made a good point about how having conversations can be motivating, cause you don’t feel so alone or isolated while studying at home and online.
A very relatable blog! It’s interesting to see how much downloading TikTok as an experiment for a blog post for this course, has impacted the way you study (maybe even for this course). I think that what you are describing is the main reason TikTok can be so addicting. It is short form content that is easily accessible, which may seem convenient, but before you know it you are scrolling endlessly: each new video providing a small dose of dopamine to your brain. I have also noticed TikTok doesn’t show you the time on screen while you are in the app, very clever! It has happened more than I’d like to admit that after closing the app, thinking maybe ten minutes had passed, it was actually closer to an hour. All these tactics to lure you in and keep you engaged. Good luck with your exams and deadlines, maybe you could try setting a limit on how many stories you can read/TikToks you can watch as a study break prior to studying? Maybe it can help keeping track and not losing sight of time 🙂
Haha very relatable post! I think all of us are struggling with deadlines, especially with the newly announced lockdown these days and The Digital can sure be a huge distraction, but also a huge help in these times. Personally, I deleted TikTok after writing a blogpost about how i kept reinstalling it and that has been successful in keeping me accountable for keeping it off my phone. Maybe some kind of social accountability could help for you too? Good luck with your exams and I hope even in lockdown you can still have a nice holiday!
I hope you’re well! I am totally the type to postpone and start a new Netflix series right before a deadline or exam… I did delete Instagram though because their explore page always keeps me scrolling for hours.
I also love Spotify for some music while studying but sometimes even that is distracting because I love to make new playlists! Anyway, your blog is super relatable and I love how you included a list of things you got distracted by while writing this haha! Wishing you a lot of luck and I hope you can still find some fun this holiday.
I will happily concur that Spotify can be a massive timesink despite how innocuous it seems. My biggest pitfall with the app is actually the amount of time I spend curating stuff for other people, as I enjoy sending friends obscure tracks that I believe they’ll appreciate and if it turns out that they like the track and want other recommendations I’ll go overboard and make them a selection of 9-hour playlists with subtly different moods and energy levels…