What does your media diet consist of?

[cairo]

Hey y'all-

I recently love asking this question. On an average week, if you had to turn your media diet into a pie chart- what would the slices look like? Where do your percentages fall? I feel like its really charming how people's answers reflect who they are as a person. Some of my friends answers have included likely suspects like 30% Instagram or 50% TikTok. But there were also more niche answers like 70% Crunchyroll or 20% browsing online recipes.

Be brutally honest! I think it's important to own our media diets. They shape our personal interests and the way we connect with the world and others. Plus I think it'd be fun to read an even bigger sample of how people like to spend their leisure time.

Personally mine is 50% Spotify, 40% YouTube, and 10% books. I get time to read at the gym/on the train and lots of time to listen to music at work. Keeping up weekly with hundreds of artists while discovering new artists has become my primary special interest. There are occasional weeks where a truly great video game will take 90% but those happen way less frequently the older I get.

[Yuvi]

Hi! To be honest mine changes wayy too often for me to be able to give a broad percentage, so instead ill just tell you mine from the past week...

first and foremost i think about 40%~ of it is on youtube. probably not the best habit but i love watching interesting and funny content on there and try to make sure i watch things that don't actively harm me in some way. i think about 25%~ is used on videogames, 25%~ is used on the net and 10%~ is used on manga/anime! i want to start just reading more books and such since all i read is manga and fourm posts but thats what i have at the moment.

[caracalled]

Ohhh this is super interesting!! The term media diet is really fun! I also love how it seems like you've asked other people this question before! Makes me curious to think what people in my life would respond...

I think I've splintered up my media consumption a bunch, especially after making a conscious effort to cancel all streaming (netflix, spotify, etc) and deactivating my Youtube recommended page + deleting (most of my) social media profiles, so it's kind of difficult to say on a day-to-day basis...

Anime -> about 40 mins a day, sometimes more, sometimes less
Manga -> typically on trains, maybe 1/2 hour a day
Reading -> Maybe like five-six hours a week, either books (mostly typography/graphic design or coding related or just stuff I find on Project Gutenberg) or longread articles I find on a dreamwidth reading group or in online collections like on GitHub or something like the CyberFeminism Index. Recipe Blogs are also a favorite of mine!!
Social Media -> I spend 15 minutes a day on average on Tumblr (thank you iOS screen time stats)
Video Games -> Video games are difficult because I'll play in bursts when something specific really interests me but otherwise I only revisit Animal Crossing and Hatsune Miku Project Diva F2nd on a regular basis. I'll give it like 30 mins a day?

I do listen to music, but it's super inconsistent when and how much.. I will not count it, but I think it comes down to maybe around 2-5 hrs a week? I also used to watch a lot more Youtube, but now I only follow around 5 creators with my RSS reader and look up tutorials on there when I need to.

So overall I end up with almost 3 hours of media consumption per day (damn):

Spoiler

[close]

I think I got a little too into it and made my response very detailed which might be against the point but this was fun to look at and break down nonetheless!

[AngelEye]

Interesting topic!
For me I usually do some of these every day or every other day...

• Look at 2-3 thread / forum / subreddit updates everyday for interests. For me right now, it's BJDs and PreCure.
• Read some news articles.
• Check in on some forums like this one.
• Watch a couple episodes of anime.
• Read in JPN and/or English, especially since I'm in a book club. Trying to read in JPN consistently, especially since I have a huge backlog. Looking at a long AU fic I'm interested in...

I also usually have a hobby I'll focus in on, like drawing something or crocheting something.

I'm trying to reduce the amount of time spent on "doom-scrolling" or just mindless media consumption on things that don't really matter. I know I can improve my skills by reading instead of focusing on irrelevant things. I'm going to make an effort to grind flashcards instead of mindlessly scroll haha.

Media consumption is really everywhere... sometimes it surprises me how many ads and songs people are exposed to in public. We can't be too hard on ourselves either since smartphones and the like are engineered to be addictive. Human beings aren't meant to be 100% productive at all times.

[BlazingCobaltX]

Interesting, I know I do a lot but I hardly count it. Let me try:
- Big portion of my time is spent on Tumblr, though my usage depends on whether there's news events happening. Excluding those days, 2 hours.
- Half an hour at best catching up on some more news on Telegram
- 1-2 hours reading stuff on my RSS feed, including this forum and other people's website updates
- 1-3 hours a day listening to music, either on Spotify or YouTube.
- YouTube is something I mostly listen to rather than watch, so in my head it doesn't really register as conscious media consumption. Can also vary between 30 mins and 3 hours easy.
- On a weekday I have to balance whether I read a book, watch something, or play a game. This type of hobby time takes 2 hours at best.

It's a bit tough to estimate this in percentages/proportion because my usage depends on what's popping online. YouTube is the tough one in this because it can be consumed so passively. The No YouTube November thread is also making me think more consciously about changing my viewing habits.

[villain]

This is an interesting method of breaking things down!

My biggest by far has got to be music. I probably average 4-6 hours listening time a day, across bandcamp streaming at work and cds/mp3s/occasionally vinyl/cassettes at home. This probably can go up to like 10 if im busy working on projects on my own haha...
I spend frankly too much time watching youtube, but I think the general quality of videos has taken a sharp downturn in the last couple of years so I am trying to cut down intentionally - I've set myself the rule I'm not allowed to watch youtube (outside of music streaming if an album isnt on bandcamp) until after my lunchbreak at work. I still probably watch a couple hours a day, plus listening to ASMR to help get to sleep.
Gaming-wise basically every weekday I spend my lunchbreak on Oldschool Runescape (its the perfect break game imo - and limiting it to my break means I don't play for hours.......)
Every week I watch at least 2 25min episodes of television since I keep up with Kamen Rider and Super Sentai as they come out. Plus Ultraman if its currently airing (as thats not all year round like the others). On top of that I probably spend two minimum nights a week watching other shows with my partner, so that's probably an average of an hour a day?
Not really sure how to classify my social media use now - I spend a decent amount of time on discord throughout the day, and a little on tumblr if I have some downtime, and I enjoy reading this forum or less commonly the lemmasoft forum (for Ren'Py projects/support).
Plus I attend gigs and cinema screenings about once a month each.
I should have reading in there somewhere but I keep failing to make time for it I'm not mathsbrained enough to make this into percentages but I think it answers the question regardless!

[JINSBEK]

Interesting question! I had to really think about it, and it makes me really wonder about my media consumption habits…

On the surface, this looks really bad, but my job allows me to listen to music for practically my entire shift. So, that’s what I tend to do: listen to music, or, listen to audio lectures (e.g. the Great Courses series on Audible) or educational YouTube videos and podcasts that don’t require visual attention. So, for much of my waking hours, I am submerged in music. When I get home I tend to shift to other forms of media, but music still makes up over 50% of what I play at home.

You might notice that video games aren’t a part of my pie. Well, I haven’t really played video games lately… After I finish work on my website, and resume painting, I’ll probably be looking at more artistic references and less news and scholarly articles.

By the way, this recent (just two years ago) news report is might interest others:

Gen Z spends half its waking hours on screen time. Here’s the good and bad news for Hollywood
The Los Angeles Times - 2022 April 12
https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/business/newsletter/2022-04-12/gen-z-spends-half-its-waking-hours-on-screen-time-heres-the-good-and-bad-news-for-hollywood-the-wide-shot

Excerpts:

...The good news for media companies is that Gen Z spends a lot of time on screens. This cohort of consumers, born in and after 1996, watches an average of 7.2 hours of video a day, which is nearly an hour more than the 6.3 hours spent by Gen X, according to new market research provided exclusively to The Times. Assuming (naively, of course) that people get the recommended eight hours of sleep a day, that’s nearly half of young folks’ waking hours captured by brightly lit rectangles.

However, while typical 13- to 26-year-olds consume content pretty much all day, they are not watching in the same way as previous generations.

Their viewing changes throughout the day. The typical Gen Z-er’s media diet starts with casually scrolling TikTok and Reels in the morning, switching to YouTube around lunchtime and turning to Netflix or Hulu in the evening for the latest must-see comedy or drama, according to the survey commissioned by music video platform Vevo and media agency Publicis Media.

“Video has essentially become a friend to Gen Z,” said Laura Vanison, Vevo’s senior director of consumer and artist insights. “It’s rewarding. It’s keeping you company. It’s not just for relaxation at the end of the day once you’ve fulfilled all of your life’s obligations and duties.”

Much of Gen Z’s viewing time is dedicated to user-generated content — TikTok influencers and amateur YouTube creators — rather than traditional longform stuff (i.e. movies and TV shows). Nearly half (48%) of video watched by Gen Z-ers was made by content creators outside of the world of traditional entertainment professionals. Meanwhile, Gen X consumers’ viewing was 72% professionally produced.

(The original report is available to premium members of the American National Association of Advertisers.)

With 93% of American Gen Zers admitting to staying up at night and losing sleep to social media, and 46% having trouble falling asleep on more than half the week, I don’t think this bodes well for the overall well-being of that generation. Boomers were made fun of for being the first to be glued to television screens, but at least that was constrained to the end of the day, and not nearly as likely to keep people up compared to compulsive endless scrolling.

[Karvellers]

It's mostly youtube... alot of youtube due to lack of hobbies ¬80% (too much youtube can someone help?), otherwise here ¬5%, spacehey for socialising ¬5%, streaming websites for tv ¬4% and messaging apps for family takes up the rest ¬6%. All of this is from my laptop. But all this is from my perspective.

[cairo]

(too much youtube can someone help?)

I hear you!! Melonland did a No YouTube challenge a few months back that I failed miserably.. Right now though I've been really successful reducing my weekly YouTube usage by over 90%. Here are some tools I would suggest.

1st - the Chrome extension 'Unhook' essentially nukes the YouTube page (no autoplay, no suggestions, etc.) You can still search for videos, and you can still see your subscriptions. (I also culled my subscriptions down to 8 people.)

2nd - Planning ahead of time what part of the day I will watch YouTube. I am not allowed to watch YouTube while eating. I am only allowed to watch YouTube on my computer. (there are a number of ways to block youtube.com on your phone.) **HARD MODE - I am only allowed to watch YouTube standing up.

3rd - This one has been the most transformative + I will make it its own post soon.. I have been experimenting with weekly 'consumption themes'. One of the biggest banes of the current media landscape (especially short form), is its unintentionally. We are exposed to so much content, most of which is related to topics we're actually interested in thanks to algorithms. But huge amounts of novelty content consumed passively with no reflection means things go in one ear and out the other.

Choosing a weekly content theme on a topic you're interested in and taking notes during/after each piece of media you consume helps us retain what we're consuming and strengthen our recall. Being able to describe something you just watched in your own words is a skill we are all losing grip of at an alarming pace.

To anybody reading this post- I'm wishing you ease and success renegotiating your relationship with YouTube.com. As somebody who easily spent 20-40hrs a week on YouTube in the past, I know how sticky that website can be.