You can have a single select that shows the state of a record. Note that you will also want a mechanism to move records out of that initial state. There is no way to automatically change the state of a single select (or any other field) based only on whether or not the record has been viewed. The user must change a field value, click a button or otherwise interact with the record.
Another option is to create a field based on when the record was created that says if the record was created in the last day, week, month, etc, then group records according to that formula field.
Also know that setting default values for fields does not work well for records created via a form.