Where the Hours Went

My thesis project, Where the Hours Went, explored my relationship with screen time and digital dependency through the creation of 30 daily collages made over the span of one month. Each collage reflected how I was feeling the day before, while the amount of content within each piece corresponded to the number of hours I had spent on my phone, which I was actively tracking throughout the project. I used three oil pastel colors based on the apps I used most frequently: yellow represented Snapchat, purple represented Instagram, and black represented TikTok. The remaining elements of each collage were created using magazine clippings, and any written text was placed on strips of magazine pages that I cut by hand. The project was both a visual record of my habits and an experiment to see whether redirecting my time and attention into making art could reduce my phone use. By the end of the month, my screen time was gradually improving, showing that placing focus elsewhere can be an effective step toward breaking digital dependence.