Introduction

So, how many of the 1,009 messages I sent actually helped enforce substantial relationships with people I care about? With our phones giving us access to everything (and everyone), something I question regularly is how meaningful our digital interactions are. More specifically, I am curious about the extent of relationships that can be maintained through texts. For one, texts provide us with the opportunity to communicate with more people, fast. But, perhaps texts only allow for some surface level of communication, preventing us from reaching deep relationships with anyone.

I was inspired by this article from the Association for Psychological Science, where researcher David Sbarra notes that evolutionary social behaviors that have been associated with close kin are now activated more frequently by our smartphones, inadvertently harming the quality of our existing relationships by shifting focus away from selective face-to-face interactions. Because of this, I wonder the quality of social interactions that can be maintained through messaging, especially in relation to how many messages we send.

I wanted to collect data on my messaging across three platforms–- Instagram, SMS, and WhatsApp– to see if there was a difference in my texting patterns across the three platforms. The main question I wanted to answer with my data collection is: Does the messaging platform influence the depth or nature of my communication? By analyzing my messaging patterns—both in terms of frequency and whether—I hoped to see whether different platforms shape how I connect with others and if these interactions are more surface-level or lead to deeper, sustained relationships.

I collected this data using a spreadsheet where I would manually count the number of texts I sent and how many people I messaged. I used digital tracing to ensure that my numbers were accurate– I downloaded my Instagram data as a JSON file and my SMS data as a SQL file and extracted that into the data visualizations that you will see in this project.