Media, content, information– it’s everywhere! And while in today’s day and age, some people may say that it is the younger generations that is consistently consuming all of this media, and surfing the internet…

Americans have always consumed a lot of media. About ten years ago, Americans consumed about thirteen hours of media a day!

Now, imagine how much media people consume every day in 2023!

I tried out this little experiment to test how much media I am consuming whilst also rating and anaylzing all of the content that I am seeing.

Let’s start with my daily average screen time. This will be a major callout, but hey, let’s be honest!

My daily average screen time is pretty high. I’ll show you my top five apps I used last week.

Screen Time Average

App Used	Daily Average	Week Total
Tik Tok	52m	6h 07m
Messages	40m	4h 42m
Snapchat	38m	4h 26m
Instagram	18m	2h 10m
Chrome	18m	2h 10m

24hr Diary

Let’s start with my mornings. Typically, I don’t use my phone a lot in the first hour or so that I am awake. I chose to record the content I see on a Tuesday, where I am usually at Cronkite News.

First Social Media Check- 7:00 AM

The first social media that I checked in the morning, and the usual first app I open is Snapchat. Snapchat is interesting because it has a lot of content, ranging from news to my friend’s content to fashion stories, while also being one of my many methods of communicating with my boyfriend and friends.

I opened the app to respond to my boyfriend and any friends who may have sent me a message throughout the night.

I did not consume any media during this check, but I did use the app.

Second Social Media Check – 8:50 AM

I check Snapchat again to respond to my boyfriend. An article from the Daily Mail caught my attention.

I chose to believe this article because I had already seen news of the reconcilation through Tik Tok, from bloggers and content creators who exclusively report on Hollywood and the Kardashians and their media strategies.

Which are very interesting, by the way! I’d truly reccomend taking a look at how they use social media to control their narrative in the media.

I scroll through the article and then I have to turn off my phone to attend my newsroom meeting.

Third Social Media Check- 10:00 AM

This time instead of looking at my phone, I was on my laptop looking at Twitter, although I did check my Twitter via my phone between the checks.

I was on Twitter for news reason, deliberely seeking out content to give me an overview of what is going on in local Arizona news that day.

Although the piece of media that caught my attention was a tweet from the @potus account on Twitter.

This is my favorite type of way to get information– directly from the source. If I need clarification, I can often turn to another news outlet or visit the government official website to read more and access the press release.

Often by accessing the press release, I am able to see all of the stipulations, regarding the policy, statement, or event.

Fourth Social Media Check- 1:00 PM

The next app I had time to browse was Instagram. I go through my timeline and see posts from my friends and funny content pages, and then I head over to my explore page.

A post that caught my attention was a post about reality TV star, Lala Kent, saying that another cast member shouldn’t be fired from the show.

This was posted from @thepopculturedweeb on Instagram. There is a video attached to the post, but it doesn’t confirm what was said on the first slide.

Therefore, I don’t trust the post or the quote from the reality TV star.

Time Check- 3:00 PM

I am deep in Cronkite News, working on an explainer video about rising interest rates, inflation and the recent bank failures.

Fourth Social Media Check- 5:00 PM‘

Normally, I’d be hosting Hypothetically Speaking, but on this day, I was running errands to reinstate my car insurance and fix those issues.

Fifth Social Media Check- 7:00 PM

When I finally get home, I scroll on Tik Tok for a little while and came across the following Tik Tok:

@abbysnewgroove When the tour bus driver said Obama plaza I nearly keeled over #irishobama#Ireland#visitireland#abbysnewgroove#healingafterheartbreak#single#solotravel#obama♬ There’s No One As Irish As Barack Obama – Live – Na Fianna

I immediately left the app to go to Google Chrome to research and fact-check this location.

It seems the place is legit and I was able to find out the reason why they decided to dedicate this service station to a black US president.

Time Check- 8:00 PM

I am working on homework and eating dinner! I take this time to relax and watch TV with my boyfriend and roommates.

Sixth Social Media Check- 10:00 PM

I go back to Tik Tok before going to bed.

@adamconover Why are we all FORCED to use TicketMaster? Link to full video in bio! #ticketmaster#scam#monopoly#taylorswift♬ original sound – Adam Conover

This video is by someone I have been a fan of for many years- @adamconover.

He is famous for making explainer videos about controversial and noncontroverisal topics, ranging from elections to weddings and now concert tickets.

I believe the algorithm brought me this video ahead of the Taylor Swift concert that was kicking off in Glendale that weekend and the blunder of her ticket sales.

For the sake of the exercise, I decided to do a little of my own research to fact-check a few of his claims. Though in this creator’s longer videos, he normally attributes the pieces of information he is quoting from.

I decided to research his first claim that “Ticketmaster is currently the exclusive ticket seller for 80% of the top performance venues in the United States”.

The first thing I googled was:

Google populated an answer from a company profile via Investopedia. That answer said that “Ticketmaster controls more than 70% of the market for ticketing”.

There is another line that states that the company is responsible for the tickets sales of “more than 80% for live concerts.”

This wasn’t exactly satisfying my informational need and I didn’t feel as if this was a deep enough fact-check of what the creator said, especially since he alluded the statistic to “top performance venues”.

I clicked the Investopedia article and found the highlighted answer within it. I then clicked the attribution link to find the source of the information.

This brought me to Yale Insights, where this information is being attributed. The article was published in November of 2022 by a Florian Ederer, an economics professor and researcher.

The 80 percent statistic comes from Ticketmaster holding “more than an 80% share of major concert primary ticketing since 1995”. This information is being linked back to a US Justice Department review of the Ticketmaster and Live Nation merger.

So, while not being completely accurate, is it accurate enough to share with viewers on Tik Tok, and is the phrase “Ticketmaster is currently the exclusive ticket seller for 80% of the top performance venues in the United States” true?

While, I would say yes, it all depends on how the audience is intepreting this statisitc in how they think about top-performance venues and the exclusivety of Ticketmaster’s position.

Summary

I don’t believe I saw a lot of questionable content within my media consumption on Tuesday, but within a week, I definetly come across posts and articles that I don’t think are necessarily truthful.

Questionable content is usually being shared by the same outlets, and so I choose not to have them on my feed or interact with them much. I usually tend to fact-check posts by what I consider to be normal users, who aren’t as well-trained in media literacy, or spotting misinformation.

Any statistic that I find to be outrageous, like the 80% Ticketmaster stat, I will fact-check. I do this because I hate to be false, and I would hate to spread misinformation as a person and journalist.

I want to understand the whole statistic, and the study to understand what exactly it was studying because often times, people use statistics as click-bait and take it at an extreme face-value, instead of with context.

Overall, this media diary taught me a lot about my consumption on a day where I’m busy and a day where I’m not busy. On a busy day, I find little pockets to consume media and when I’m doing that, I don’t take the time to fact-check a lot of the information I see.