Media I’m Consuming: 2021
To think that it’s going to be 2022 in less than two weeks is CRAAAZY to me. I cannot even begin to describe the changes and growth that I’ve experienced this year. Another idea I had for this blog is to document the various types of media that I consume, and how it changes year to year. As my iPhone loves to gently remind me every Sunday, my averaged 7 hours of screen time take up a large sum of my day-to-day! I also love talking to others about how they spend their time digitally, mostly as a pulse check to see if the content that I’m consuming is ‘on-trend’ or not.
This year has been an interesting one, to say the least. I’ve spent a ton more time on my phone and laptop due to online school, COVID restrictions, and a surge of new social media platforms becoming more and more addicting. At my peak, I was spending 14+ hours on TikTok, watching brain numbing short-form videos and learning 15-second dances for hours on end. I’ve also spent a lot more time listening to podcasts, since I have driven back and forth from Ithaca to NYC many times— my Spotify Wrapped indicated that I listened to over 2,000 minutes of podcasts this year! So I guess my takeaways are this: I have spent a lot more time listening to audio and short-form video over this year, while minimizing my time on purely social media platforms or chat-based applications, like Facebook and Snapchat.
Apps I have Deleted:
Clubhouse - This was a podcasting app that blew up at the onset of my quarantine. I was drawn to it because a ton of my favorite creators (YouTubers, Musicians, etc.) were opening rooms on the app, in addition to a ton of Investing/VC/PE professionals that I had heard of in the past. Though I learned quite a bit initially on the app, it eventually became way to crowded with random content & notifications, so I deleted it a few months later.
Snapchat - I used to use the app as a primary way to keep in touch with friends and acquaintances without putting in too much effort (A streak took me 1 minute a day), as almost a self-validating mechanism to prove to myself that I still had friends in different parts of the world. It eventually got old, I broke a few streaks and felt like the world had ended for a couple days, and realized that I should explore other more meaningful means to keep in touch with my friends outside of a sideways selfie every morning.
TikTok - As I stated earlier, I spent a majority of my quarantine on this app, and have gone through myriad FYPs — from cooking to dancing to life hacks to investment banking to Pakistan FYPs, the endless scroll of TikTok quite literally removed 4 hours of sleep from my daily routine. It was also making me incredibly unproductive and the content itself started to get quite repetitive. It also misleadingly gave me hope that I TOO could become an influencer and get millions of likes on my videos, which began my conquest to become famous. A couple dozen embarrassing videos later, (and one that hit 10k views!!!) I deleted the app and never looked back.
VSCO - VSCO was essentially my second Instagram account. Everything that I deemed 'not cool enough’ to be posted publicly on my feed, I posted on VSCO for a smaller group of girl friends to see. It also employed an endless scroll, and I followed a ton of aesthetically pleasing accounts of girls going on vacation, posting high fashion and dining, and it eventually became an unhealthy addiction where I would save VSCO photos from other people’s accounts and try to recreate it in my own life. Thus, eliminating the creativity of VSCO that brought me to the app in the first place. I also got busy, and never posted anymore, so I figured I would delete it to clean up space and make my phone run faster.
Apps I have Downloaded: This is about to be such a pragmatic list I am going to LAUGH later
Robinhood - 2021 was the year of the retail trader!! And also the year I decided I would start putting my savings into the stock market. I toyed with margins, lost a lot of money and eventually earned it back being the simple, risk-averse investor that I am. What Robinhood did do though, is spark my interest for gamification, as I think the creators of the app have done a great job of gamifying equity markets and making it both exciting & easy to learn about/invest in the stock market.
Leica FOTOS - My sweet boyfriend Richard bought me my dream camera, a Leica CL for my 21st birthday, and I carry it around with me all the time. Its compatible, photo-uploading app, FOTOS, is another app I spend a ton of time on to upload and edit pictures for the day. So much more efficient than uploading to my computer and converting every photo to JPEG on Lightroom!
BetterHelp - 2021 is also the year of mental health!! The pandemic has impacted us in more ways we can name, but it has for sure helped me weed out friendships that were not bringing me joy + hone in one those whom I love and care for the most + mature and become more independent. It has also opened me up to the idea of therapy, or talking through my reflections to be able to name the emotions I’m feeling and point out the takeaways of each new life experience.
Discord - 2021 is also the year of gaming!! I don’t use Discord for gaming, though I know it’s very popular in that community. I downloaded this because a few organizations I am a part of use it as their primary chat function, and MAN I am never using Slack again. It’s so much easier, has more functionality, and is far more well organized than other chat apps I’ve used thus far.
Celcius - 2021 was ALSO the year of Crypto!! FOMO investing is real, and many of my friends began investing and talking about cryptocurrency and its growth (and decline!) over the past year. I have part of my portfolio in Celcius and I also use Coinbase to earn through their learning portal.
InstaCart - This one I included for fun. I became an InstaCart driver to qualify for the vaccine as an essential worker, and have used it multiple times when I was too lazy to carry groceries from my car. Not bad!
Other Media:
Podcasts -
Snacks Daily by Robinhood
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
How to Be a Better Human by TED
How I Built This with Guy Raz
TV Series -
Silicon Valley
Jane the Virgin
The Good Place
The Great British Baking Show
Squid Game
Music Artists -
Justin Bieber, Lauv, LANY, BTS, BlackPink, Amine, Blxst, Taylor Swift, Why Don’t We, Boy in Space, No Rome, Rita Ora, Ella Henderson, HONNE, Lil Tjay, etc.
