Internet Time Wasters

Reddit

Registered users of reddit, or redditors, like senior Jake Little submit content as links to other websites or as text posts. Every day, for anywhere from one to three hours, he browses his frontpage, upvoting posts that make him laugh and occasionally commenting on a submission.

“[Reddit is] a good time waster–which is also one of the worst things about it,” Little said.

Little will occasionally stray from the most popular submissions on of the front page to check out the more obscure video game subreddit.

Subreddits are themed, like r/politics for U.S. news, r/skyrim for gaming advice or r/aww for cute photos of puppies and kittens–all of which make up a redditor’s frontpage.

“There’s a lot of cool, interesting stuff,” Little said. “You can get a good laugh.”

Netflix

Netflix provides on-demand streaming of movies and television shows. For $7.99 a month, senior Sara Cooper can immediately access thousands of television shows and movies from her Nintendo Wii at home or from her iPhone.

“I pretty much don’t watch regular TV any more, it’s just Netflix,” Cooper said.

Cooper uses Netflix to catch up on or rewatch her favorite television shows–like “Lost,” “Dexter” and “Medium“–and to find new shows like “Hotel Babylon.” She prefers Netflix over other streaming services–like Hulu and traditional television–because it’s commercial-free, has every episode of a series and gives a wider movie selection than she would find on cable.

“All of the episodes of ‘Law and Order: SVU‘ that are on there, that just distracts me from doing my homework 24/7,” Cooper said.

StumbleUpon

StumbleUpon is a modified search engine. Users enter their interests, like design, fitness or zoology and, with the click of a button labeled “Stumble!,” the engine takes stumblers to a recommended webpage, photo or video.

Each new page on StumbleUpon is something new and different from the previous page, jumping between categories of interests. The site takes sophomore Malcolm Gibbs from a news article on a theater technique to clips of a movie by Bela Fleck, one of his favorite musicians, jumping between his categories of interests.

“It doesn’t always stay on exactly what I would want to browse,” Gibbs said. “Sometimes, I’m on one subject for too long and need to look at something else, but sometimes I want to stay on that category.”

Pinterest

Photographs of white dresses, glittered manicured fingernails and platform heels scroll across the screen as freshman Emily Biegelsen pins photos to image collection boards that she has created on Pinterest.

“It’s kind of nice because it’s all girls and it’s a girlie site,” Biegelsen said.

Pinterest is a social photo sharing website where users can collect images to “pin” to their boards and view other boards. When looking at someone’s profile, Biegelsen can follow certain boards of theirs rather than following everything they post –her wedding board has 221 followers while others, like her celebrity board, have fewer.

“I like Pinterest because it gives you a lot of ideas,” Biegelsen said. “It’s cool to see other peoples’ interests.”