Study reveals some teens receive 5,000 notifications daily, most spend almost two hours on TikTok | Kids officially don’t like Facebook::undefined
That’s about 4990 more than I do.
I’ve disabled almost all of them. Even the ones I do get only appear as an icon on my notification bar. I don’t even have lockscreen notifications anymore. I find it too invasive, and feel like the device is demanding my attention.
IMO all notifications should be opt-in. I basically have everything but my phone, text messages, and Outlook email off. The constant buzzing throughout the day was driving me insane.
I have rule where if I install an app it sends me a notification that isn’t necessary for the app’s functionality it gets deleted forever. I’d have to make an exception for work apps but I don’t think its been an issue.
I have very few apps not from fdroid.
all notifications should be opt-in.
aren’t they already? for the past few versions of Android, every newly installed app needs to ask you for permission to send notifications, and I’m fairly sure iOS has had it for even longer.
Turn sounds and vibrate off. Then you can keep it in your pocket and enjoy silence.
I’d love to, but I need to be responsive for work.
Then filter only those messages that you need to respond to. Not everything is urgent. Check the non-urgent things manually every 15 minutes and you will still be fine.
Yeah, I’m with you. I declared war on notifications during covid and they suddenly became super annoying whilst working from home
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God, I wish I could get Teams to do that.
I disabled lock screen notification for a) privacy; b) so that I could see my nice lockscreen wallpaper
5000 notifications per day? That’s over 3 notifications per minute.
Are they opting in to get a notification every time someone in a thousand+ member discord server posts anything at all?
I think it might be notifications for group chats they’re in. Maybe spread over multiple apps? Anecdotally I remember having the same friend group on multiple apps, with a couple of members missing/added in each. So many times the same topic create double or triple notifications. But 5000 is insane…
5000 per day?! That’s insane. I feel like I get bombarded with notifications, so I checked how many I got today. Exactly 69.
Nice.
Nice
Nice.
Nice.
Nice.
Nice
Nice.
I feel like you have a nice balance that still feels too intense sometimes. I bet I get maybe 30 on a normal day and 50 on a busy day.
Lessoning notifications is one of the things I actively strive for to enjoy life more.
Nice.
I can’t emphasize how important it is for you to control your phone, especially notifications. Every notification is literally a mind hijacking attempt. Regardless of the type of notification, it’s something that disrupts our thinking and our flow.
Some of them are necessary—but most aren’t.
All the native apps will of course try to get as much permission from you as possible, including notifications. Don’t allow this permission freely.
Get really strict about which apps need to send you notifications, and when. Take it from a dude who used to give free reign to all apps for notifications.
Once I started thinking in a more digitally minimalistic way, it made a huge difference. Running GrapheneOS actually helped with this a lot. But you don’t need GOS to do this and feel the difference.
I got some notifications turned on, but most of em are silent. So they still get delivered, but they’re not time-sensitive. They’ll be there when I check my phone next. I don’t need em interrupting whatever I was doing or thinking.
TL;DR: Be strict about which notifications you allow, and when. It’ll do wonders for your thinking, productivity, and mental health.
I’ve developed some PTSD like symptoms for when my phone goes off.
Notification, call, whatever. Immediate panic and I have to remember to breathe.
Even trimming every notification I can, it still happens several times throughout the day, and my phone only has audible notifications when I’m at home, most from my wife.
I left that job over a year ago and still I can’t shake it.
Sorry for you, but how the fuck did you get like that ? If you aren’t massively exaggerating, that sounds super un healthy and a massive mental issue. What can possibly make it become like that?
Sole IT person for a corporation and was on call 24/7/365.
It was just supposed to be a help desk position.
It was for an MSP that… Well, the whole thing was a nightmare, but I had lost my IT hospitality job due to covid and the place shuttering. I was desperate.
For me a simple combination of autism, massive social anxiety, and actual PTSD ^^’
It’s a symptom rather than a problem.
Some jobs are incredibly stressful - often the result of being given responsibility for things which are either out of your control or you don’t have resources appropriate to address. Sadly, this intense pressure inspires high levels of performance at the cost of the individual’s sanity.
If your phone is your “inbox” or the way you’re notified of incidents then it’s natural that over time a notification will signal your endochrine system to go into fight or flight mode.
When a lizard sees a moving shadow and darts for the bushes - that doesn’t mean it’s scared of shadows it just doesn’t want to get eaten by a swooping raptor.
This is a mental disorder that you need looked into.
Agreed. The only notifications I have on are for my email and texts. The first thing I do when I download a new app is turn off notifications.
I just wanted an easier way to filter what is notified. I don’t care if X or Y promoted profile posted, but I want to know if a friend did.
That unfortunately is going to be app dependent as far as I know. Your phone can set if a given app will alert you, but for example facebook would have to filter which friend’s notifications get sent.
An app that let you manage notifications by user across multiple platforms would be amazing.
“I don’t want to hear from Jay today” would be an awesome checkbox.
Yeah, I believe the newer android versions allow for that but requires app developers to implement notification sorting. Unfortunately it really isn’t in their interest to do so.
I am still kind of in a state of dissonance after learning that some people don’t disconnect their phones from internet when it’s not directly used. That just feels wrong on some level. Cursed, I’d say.
I don’t disconnect my phone from internet because my usage is too spontaneous to always be turning it on or off. I do have my app permissions locked down though, GPS always off unless I’m using it, and nothing is allowed to run in the background except my VPN. I totally disconnect my pc from the network cable when I’m not actively downloading something though.
No one likes facebook anymore. It’s been junk for over a decade.
I was in middle school when it was getting really popular, now it’s like that one guy from High School you try to forget about…
WTF? Why do people like getting notifications at all? Every time I get one on my phone that is not important I am just full of anger because it is distracting me from getting stuff done.
For me, notifications trigger a small hit of anxiety
Yeah me too. Fuck.
Literal doses of happy chemicals get released because attention. You should watch the Social Dilema if you haven’t already.
You can literally get people hooked on this and retrain on what is good happy time and what is not good happy time. Shit is scary.
I get notifications for precisely two things: Texts and emails. And only emails because of work. Otherwise it would only be texts. I turn off all other notifications the second I install the app because I don’t need that shit.
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5000? I get annoyed just from one from an app I forgot I had installed.
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My mom’s phone looks like a notification factory exploded in her status bar. I bet she gets a dozen notifications a minute. She has all of her Facebook notifications on, set to push; she has weather notifications from multiple weather apps; she has email notifications, text message notifications, advertising notifications from random stores… it’s hellish. Thankfully all of her notifications are set to silent.
Anyway, having seen my mom’s phone, I can well imagine 5,000 a day in someone who doesn’t know or doesn’t care about notification hygiene.
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As far as I can tell she ignores all but the top two or three at any given time, and just checks individual apps (messaging, email) as desired. So functionally, it’s like she has no notifications.
It was also discovered that more than half of the participants received more than 200 notifications in one day, with some getting an incredible 5,000 notifications in 24 hours.
5000 is 3-4 notifications a minute 24/7. I’m not seeing how a phone could be usable at that point.
I don’t have kids yet but things like these make me wonder how a parent would deal with the kids having a smartphone. If you don’t get them one they’re going to feel left out as you can be sure as hell that most other kids have one. I’m no psychologist but to me if you buy your kid a smartphone then you basically risk having him/her destroy his/her brain cells and attention span with Tiktok and Snapchat. When I was a kid I did have a cellphone, and I had a PC too, but our house back then didn’t have internet and receiving thousands of notifications in a single day was definitely unheard of back then.
That’s a very valid concern. Personally, I think parents should keep their kids away from phones much longer. While I’ve only got a kid on the way, I’m hoping to keep them off of smartphones until high school.
That sounds too long to me. Since later in elementary school (3rd grade), smartphone (and tablet I had at the time) have been really useful tools for me. Sure, I definitely wasted plenty of time on Minecraft videos, but it’s not any worse than TV. It helped me learn a lot of what I know now. Without that, I’d have problems getting into any high school. For example, it helped me fly through chemistry and physics like a breeze. Also I learned English, which has unlocked me access to even more info. I wouldn’t have been able to pass 7th grade without studying for history, again on my phone.
But of course, there was less crap than now. I am happy I got to grow up with YouTube channels like ExplainingComputers, ElectroBOOM, LGR, Scott Manley, Techmoan, The 8-bit guy, Tom Scott, Veritasium, Ted-Ed, and others I don’t remember.
But even before I had smartphone, I could already watch youtube on my Sony Ericsson W200i. That was something. It ran at like 5fps in SD quality, but it worked. And 50MB was basically infinite data.
I watch most of those channels so here are a few unsolicited recommendations:
Technology connections
Cathode Ray dude
And maybe Aging wheels
I definitely think tech should be a part of their life, but a personal smartphone is something I personally feel can wait.
Can you explain why?
At this point, smartphones can most of the time replace desktop/laptop computers. At least Android. I am not sure how it looks on the side of iOS. Though, of course, using e.g. Collabora Office on smartphone isn’t nearly as convenient as LibreOffice on laptop, but it can be done. And with Termux, it feels anything is possible.If you mean that they’ll have it 24/7 which feels unhealthy, they can just leave it at home. I did that until high school (my own decision) because I didn’t want to break my phone. In fact, I still do that when I go walk my dog. I just bought the cheapest dumb phone that I don’t have to worry about for cases of emergency. It was less than 10 bucks. Of course I tend to forget it, so it doesn’t really work.
I want my kids to have the tools they need to succeed, and I realize a smartphone has nearly become essential at a certain age, but they also control the lives of many people. Technology is an amazing tools, but it has been designed to be highly addictive. Kids have enough problems to deal with, and I don’t want to make things harder for them.
—- edit —- I suppose what I’m really trying to say is that I want my children to first learn healthy habits.
I’m torn because your cell phone use sounds pretty healthy but I worry others get a more negative experience overall especially with social media.
Also the idea of anyone prior to high-school having cell phones feels odd to me, when I was in school kids worked summer jobs to buy a phone so senior year of high school was a popular year to get into the cell phone game. I didn’t get one myself until I completed college and thought I’d need it for work (I didn’t). Hardly use it but it is expected to have once you’re in your mid 20s making appointments and whatnot. But do people really expect you to have one in elementary school?
My friends gave their kids a cell phone at 12. Lots of parental controls on it.
That’s about what I’m expecting. 12 and 14 aren’t that different.
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disable notifications for most apps. I’m not sure if you can do it for iPhone, but any android phone, you can stop any app from sending any type of notification, even separating based on category. Eg. Turning off all youtube notifications except for security ones.
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Have your kid read books, this will do wonders in helping them get ahead near the start of their school life, as well as doing wonders on their creativity and imagination.
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Limit their screen time, and force them to find something else to do with their time. My mum did this to me, I hated it growing up, but I’m incredibly grateful now. It forced me to find ways to have fun without technology.
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Drop these restrictions down when they are a teenager. Teenagers want freedom. Hopefully, through making your kid read books while growing up, they will choose to read books in their teenage years. I know I did, and both my sisters did.
Although this is the thoughts from someone who is 20, going off their own recent experience and from watching their siblings, I would definitely love to hear thoughts from others about this, tho.
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My classmates get similar amount of notifications. It doesn’t seem to be a problem, they just ignore all of them. There’s no way you’re going through each of those.
If you aren’t even looking at most notifications why have them enabled? Just seems like you are torturing yourself by that point.
I block notifications on all my devices for most things beyond messaging apps. I also turned off badges on my mail client because I already know I’ll never get to zero, so why remind myself of that?
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Where are you guys subscribed to? I only get a couple e-mails per month.
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I hope to teach my kids the beauty of Do Not Disturb. I get a lot of notifications but they don’t notify me.
I’m no psychologist but to me if you buy your kid a smartphone then you basically risk having him/her destroy his/her brain cells and attention span with Tiktok and Snapchat.
Things this has been said about before: internet, computers, video games, cable TV, broadcast TV, radio, comics, pulp novels, newspapers, the printing press, widespread ability to read/write…
Hell, the first kid to utter a word probably got growled at.
Just because we can’t keep up as we get older, doesn’t mean the kids are doomed. They live at a faster pace than us, it’s always been like this. It’s just technology didn’t change as fast.
I’d go insane if I got 5k notifications in a day
Let’s write 5k comments… evil laughter
5k notifications are 99th percentile. Probably the media is around 100-200 and average should be lower.
My stats say my phone gets ~140/day. I definitely ignore 99% of them, just like my 10k+ unread emails.
I’m genuinely curious why you don’t disable notifications you don’t need, and unsubscribe from emails you dont want?
Notifications get rolled up all the time, if I’ve received a lot of messages in Signal or Teams, I just have one notification in the dropdown for each group, even though I may have “received” 50 notifications from that group.
On emails, reply-chains are prevalent, so I can read the latest one and usually not have to open 20 emails.
I have some services set to email me events, transactions, and notifications, which I don’t need today. However, sometimes these sites go offline, discontinue a product, remove the ability for you to view prior information or contributions, archive old data, change their ToS to something you can’t stand, any number of things that might mean that data is now unreachable to you. So for those emails I just sort them off and they’re archived.
I’m almost 40 and I officially don’t like Facebook. Why anyone still uses it is beyond me, it’s just don’t a good experience anymore.
Tbf though, I’ve backed off most social platforms.
Kids have not liked facebook in ages
They’ve reported it for ages, but it’s only been in the last few years that they’ve actually been not signing up.
I think you can just say “everyone officially dislikes Facebook.”
Except grandmas
I turn off almost all notifications. I only allow messaging apps, and system notifications. Even then I find it too much to be honest.
I just have my phone always silenced except for phone calls from contacts.
Exactly same for me. Like, there’s rarely anything urgent enough.
Totally unrealistic. “Some teens” are the addicts that would have watched TV 16 hours per day if they were born 20 years before, young guys know how to manage notifications and most of them just don’t care about them
*Raises hand shamefully, then looks for the remote.*
