1. Personal Video Habits

My personal video habits have greatly changed over the course of my life. When I was little, I only watched DVDs on my Dora the Explorer TV with a built in DVD player. My twin sister and I would watch a variety of DVDs, usually when we were supposed to be cleaning our room. We would watch a few Barbie movies, The Chronicles of Narnia, or some Disney movies. 

When I was in middle school and into part of high school, I would sit in my mom’s computer lab after school and watch movies. I usually watched videos while I worked on my homework. Once, I looked up a list of 1980s movies and watched them over the course of a few weeks. The list came from a Google search of 80s movies, and I remember watching The Breakfast Club, The Princess Bride, and a few other movies while I did math homework. 

In my junior year of high school, I went to ASMSA, where I lived in a residence hall for 2 years. While I was at ASMSA, I did not have a TV, so I could only watch what I could pull up on my phone or laptop. However, I did have a Motorola phone that was compatible with a projector “Moto-mod.” This add-on to the phone could project an image onto a wall, which I took advantage of often. This was also the first time I had Netflix and Amazon Prime streaming accounts.  

Now, I have a whole setup to watch videos or movies. In my Honors North dorm room, I have my TV set up with cable and a DVD player. I also have an HDMI cord that is hooked up to a laptop to stream movies or TV shows through the TV.  

I watch a lot of different shows, movies, and videos throughout my day. When I first get up, I will either listen to Spotify, or I will watch something on cable. On the weekends, it is usually Disney Channel for a little bit, then I channel surf until I find a Hallmark movie or a Harry Potter or Marvel marathon.  

I usually get up earlier than I need to for class, so when I have the extra time, I scroll through Facebook, and watch a lot of videos. I also watch these videos throughout my day. The Facebook videos I really love are Tasty, Every Blank Ever, 5-Minute Crafts and Smile with Markian videos. I also watch these Facebook videos while procrastinating my homework. I watch all these videos a lot even though I never use the crafts or recipes in real life. The Every Blank Ever videos and Smile with Markian videos always make me laugh, so I like watching those on a long day. 

After classes, I watch movies or TV shows with my friends. What we watch depends on our moods for the day. We also have a 'To Watch' list I keep on my whiteboard in my room. Between the four of us, my friends and I have subscriptions to Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime, and Disney Plus. 

Netflix was the first streaming service I had. I begged my mom to let me have one so my sister and I could binge watch Once Upon a Time. Since then, I have watched a lot of different shows and movies with it. Now, my friends and I are sporadically working through The Office and whatever movies we have not seen yet or are on our watch list. We have drifted away from Netflix because we can get a Disney Plus and Hulu subscription for cheaper than Netflix. 

On Hulu, we have been binge-watching The Musketeers. We made it through an entire season in about 5 days. The seasons are made up of 10 episodes that are at least 50 minutes long. My friend suggested we watch it, and it is fun to see how we rank the different characters. The three of us that watch it have decided that D'artagnan is our favorite character.

With our Amazon Prime subscription, my sister and I will do marathon weekends of Doctor Who. We have been watching Doctor Who for a long time, and there is a current season we are keeping up with. The new episodes air on Sunday nights, and we usually switch over to BBC America on cable to watch it. If we miss a week, we stream it from the BBC America website on Monday night. 

With the Disney Plus account we use, we binge watch a lot of the older shows that we watched when we were younger. In about 2 weeks, we finished Wizards of Waverly Place, and we have also been working through many of the Disney classics. I like to watch Marvel movies, and since Disney Plus includes most of them, I have been planning a binge-watching weekend of Marvel movies. I think I like watching Disney Plus for the nostalgia, because there are a lot of the Disney Channel Originals that I liked when I was younger, like Avalon High or Geek Charming. 

When I go home for extended breaks, I watch a lot of the local cable channel, which plays a couple of episodes of multiple shows. I also watch the Food Network a lot, especially Guy’s Grocery Games and Chopped. During Christmas break, my family and I watch either Hallmark Christmas movies or the Christmas marathon of Doctor Who on BBC America. I also watch Jeopardy a lot at home, because my dad and I like to see how many questions we can answer. However, since they changed the time from 11:00 am to 4:00 pm, we have not been watching it. 

It is likely because I am a GenZ kid that watching or streaming video is such a large part of my day-to-day life. While these video habits are not always healthy - I stay up way too late watching Facebook food videos for that - I like being able to chill out in my room watching a movie and laughing with my friends. Watching movies is how we have bonded in our hectic college lives.