February 2nd, 2025

Peyton LeDrew


MCO 425: Digital Media Literacy I

Quinlyn Shaughnessy

Digital Journal – February 2nd, 2025


Welcome to my 24-Hour Media Diary for the 2nd of February 2025.




8:00 AM


I woke up at 8 AM to my alarm. The first thing I did this morning was doom scroll my for you page on TikTok. Turns out it still hasn't been banned and I wasn't dumb enough to delete it from my phone like others had. The specific media I consumed was a mix of gaming content, memes, politics, and a little bit of science content.

While my attention span shrivels up, TikTok is collecting my behavior data. It knows what videos I watched, for how long, which videos I stuck around to watch and which ones I immediately skipped. All the while, I was fed suggested targeted ads and specifically TikTok shop ads for products I may want to buy.




10:30 AM - 11:30


During the rest of my morning, I decided to work on a coding project I have been wanting to tackle for a long time. Basically its a website with an interactive grid, where the user can draw pixel art. In order to do this, I needed to research a bit.

I watched a few YouTube videos and tutorials to guide me through the grid process. Here is one that helped me a lot:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AVMSCFMCz9w

While I was being productive with a personal project, YouTube is no stranger to collecting data either and flexing their algorithm on me as well. YouTube carefully tracks how long I watch a video, which parts I rewatch, and if a video was useful to me or not. Every video has two un-skippable personalized ads from google, and the sidebar on the right hand side has videos the algorithm thinks I will enjoy.




12:30 AM


At this time I had to attend a baby shower on the other side of town. While I was struggling to figure out what media I could have possibly consumed during this time, it hit me. Not only was I playing music in the car, but I also used google maps on the drive to and from.

Last blog post I discussed my newfound obsession with Hatsune Miku, but since then I've switched back to my normal playlist. Spotify already is aware of the music I like to listen to since I add the songs to my playlist. But Spotify also has a similar algorithm process to both YouTube and TikTok now. There is a new feature called smart shuffle, which recommends you new songs that are similar to those you already listen too that are not in your playlist. So Spotify collects data on how long I listen to songs, if I added them to my playlist immediately after listening, or if I skip it quickly.

Google Maps is a bit more interesting. Google maps is obviously tracking my location, my current speed, and all sorts of data I probably don't know about. Twice, a pop up was asking if a stalled vehicle on the road was still there, so Google is seeking external data from the outside world to notify users on their app.

The baby shower took up most of my day, and aside from using Spotify and Google Maps again, I didn't consume any extra media since then.



Closing Thoughts


Looking at my media consumption, I was more aware of how the services I use for entertainment is monitoring my daily use on their platforms to figure out how to keep me using those platforms for longer. While being blissfully unaware of how much data I am willfully sending these companies, it scares me to think of what extra data they collect that I have no idea about.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *