From March through to April of 2014, I recorded the television shows and movies (or, "old media") that I consumed as part of a project for my Contemporary Design Theory class at Humber College. At first I thought it would be interesting to document how much I watched, but what became more interesting was my own engagement while I was watching, and what that says about how we consume media on a day to day basis.

Over the course of the month, I consumed approximately 46 hours of old media - that amounts to nearly 2 days out of my month devoted exclusively to old media, or nearly 1 month of out of a single year. That further breaks down to 11.5 hours per week, and roughly 2 hours a day. According to a recent study, the average Canadian watches over double that amount per day.

When watching old media, I spent over half my time streaming from my laptop. I also spent more of my time watching television shows. When it came to genre, I preferred to laugh, either alone, or with a friend. My top five television series consumed were Under the Gunn, Archer, Mr. Selfridge, Community, and Inside No. 9 (3/5 of which are comedies). While I appeared to have a preference for what I put on, was I really, truly paying attention to it? Let's find out by taking a look at what I was doing while watching.

I discovered that 84% of the time I wasn't actually engaged in what I was watching. 60% of the time I was multi-tasking doing homework and watching a film or show. I learned that multi-tasking while watching television isn't an uncommon thing - 58% of Canadian's multi-task while consuming old media. But if you're trying to do something important, like homework, is multi-tasking really helping? I took a test to see how much longer it took me to complete a task while multi-tasking, and it took me almost twice as long (and I made many more mistakes than I did while not multi-tasking!).

The way I consume old media is much different than how I originally believed I did. I originally thought I spent much more time engaging with it than I actually do. I can understand why. Homework, housework, daily chores and tasks can be laborious, and having that form of entertaining noise that you can tune in and out of whenever you wish is quite enticing. That having been said, multi-tasking in such a way can be potentially detrimental to my own work, an so next time I choose to consume old media while doing homework, I may want to be mindful that it doesn't interfere to a point where my work is compromised.

Sarah Stephens
Humber College, Winter 2014.