Di Di Di Ding!!! Di Di Di Ding!!! Arghhhhhhh... It's morning again. Let me dismiss my cellphone alarm.
Our lives are more and more dependent on cell phones as we are going forward.
Do you know that in 2020, cellphone internet users in Canada spent an average of 2.23 hours per day online via mobile? This was an increase of roughly half an hour from a year prior. (GlobalWebIndex; Canada Media Fund 2021)
Now I want to tell you my story about one day with my cellphone.
How I start my day:
Today I woke up, and same as always, the first thing that I did was grabbing my cell phone
while my eyes were still closed. I think this is the way that most of us start our days in this era.
I dismissed the morning alarm and then said good morning to my husband via WhatsApp, my husband works in another city, so our cellphones are the most efficient way to stay connected. When he sees my short, good morning video message, he calls me via WhatsApp to say good morning face to face and wishes me a good day. It makes me smile while I'm still in bed :)
WhatsApp is the leading messaging app that I use to stay connected with my friends and family in Iran and Canada. Some of the central values that push me to use WhatsApp are:
WhatsApp Values for my daily use:
It is fast and easy to use the messaging app
Most of the people that I know are connected and use it
It is not banned in Iran, and my family can use it there
The quality of video and voice calls are acceptable
It is supposed to be safe (if we can trust Facebook, BTW)
Siri:
After that, while I'm doing my daily morning routines, I ask Siri to play a good song to start my day,
I think Siri is a big part of my micro-moments throughout my day.
I use Siri for:
I want to listen to
I want to remind
I want to call
I want to wake up at
Siri Values that make me use it for my Micro-moments every day:
It's easy to use, and 90% of the time, it gets the command in the right way.
There is no need to use it by hand so I can do things even while I'm driving
It supports a high range of commands that makes daily routines easier
While eating my breakfast, I check my Instagram and catch up with news and what's going on with my friends and family.
I was checking my daily hours spent on Instagram, and the results were shocking for me!!! My daily average was almost 2 hours!!! It makes me wonder that maybe I'm addicted to this app, so I set a time limitation to use the Instagram app to control my daily hours. It's so addictive for me, maybe because I used to be so close to my friends and family, and now, I feel lonely more often.
The central values that make Instagram addictive for me:
Feeling connected to the world while I'm alone and using it
I can be in touch with my whole family and everything
I use it to follow important news by following trustable news Accounts
As the day goes on, I need to do my educational tasks with my classmates and catch up with my course materials; the app that I'm using for these two semesters to stay connected with almost everything related to my courses is MS-Teams. It is reliable and helps with the majority of my classwork and assignments.
MS-Teams Values:
Ongoing practical and trustable app
Collaborative functions to do works together
Online classes and meetings
Cloud space to save and edit MS Office everywhere
Now I have done my assignments for this week, and it is almost afternoon. I needed to go out for some shopping, and meanwhile, one of my classmates invited me for some snacks; this was the first time I was going to her house, and she sent me the location via WhatsApp.
Google Maps:
I want to Go or Find place Micro-Moment
Typically, I use google maps to find addresses and locations. However, I'm not so happy to use the navigation tool of google maps because sometimes it chooses unnecessary routes
that make you drive yourself around, and ahhhhhh this frustrates me. After all, it's an excellent app to find addresses and locations nearby.
Spotify:
And it's night now; I'm on my way home and listening to the Curl next door podcast via Spotify and trying to understand the insight of the curly hair girls to find a way to promote their podcasts as an assignment for one of my classes.
Hootsuite app:
And finally, Hootsuite, the app that I learned to use from my digital media marketing classes.
It is excellent and straightforward to use for me, and the benefits are a lot, and it's good because I can see all my social networks in one place and plan for my days ahead; I check it before sleep and arrange my content to share for tomorrow.
Final Words:
Almost everything is digital in our lives, and now we can access a variety of our daily needs online, such as news, weather forecast, work schedules, and shopping lists. This is a fact that we cannot ignore.
I'm pretty sure without some apps these days, and it's hard to go on; on the other side, I think cellphones and apps are making everything easier for us, but they are making us use less of our brainpower. For example, we don't remember phone numbers or addresses anymore, letting our cellphones do that. We don't calculate mentally anymore, and instead, we always have a calculator in over pockets.
Now I'm Sleeping, and these are the last words of my day:
Hey Siri, wake me up tomorrow at 7 am!
Comments