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Teens inundated with phone prompts day and night, research finds

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Re: Teens inundated with phone prompts day and night, research finds

#71

Jonathan Haidt has done a great job advocating this problem and is writing a book coming out this next year called "The Anxious Generation": https://jonathanhaidt.substack.com/p/phone-free-schools https://jonathanhaidt.substack.com/p/sapien-smartphone-repor... https://jonathanhaidt.substack.com/p/social-media-mental-ill... This isn't something that can be solved with "better tech". It is something that is solved with…

The Burnout Society by Byung-Chul Han addresses this as well.

Re: Teens inundated with phone prompts day and night, research finds

#72

My kid (soon to be 11 years old) has this problem and is (almost) driving me nuts. There are three causes of this: 1) He's dumb. Will click and install on any crap he comes by. 2) He doesn't know to operate his phone. Every now and then I take his phone and turn off notifications for the apps I saw that popped them. #3: This one's mysterious to me as well. Somehow they (the notifications) get re-enabled back. I'm dis…

Aren't you able to solve #1, by locking down your kid's ability install anything?

Yes. IPhones (and android too iirc) also have a robust screen time system we use for our kids. Problem is that Apple doesn't make it very easy to use if you're not familiar with tech... and I've seen several frustrating UX/sync bugs with it. Could be a lot better, but it's there - especially important to limit them charging in-game purchases to your card without prompting for approval.

Re: Teens inundated with phone prompts day and night, research finds

#74
post #5

Everybody is. I'm strongly of the opinion that all this 'needy tech' is a net negative and I try hard to keep it out of my life. But some of it, mostly associated with my kids schooling, is very hard to avoid. 10 emails per week about some school portal with 'an important message' (which you need to separately logged into, of course the message is so important that it can't be entrusted to mere email, even though the…

> But some of it, mostly associated with my kids schooling, is very hard to avoid. 10 emails per week about some school portal with 'an important message' that ends up being nonsense but you're not able to block it because one day an actually important message might show up.

> Tech should serve us

This problem isn't really the tech, it's the people behind these messages. Complain to them. You shouldn't be getting "OMFG IMPORTANT MESSAGE" alerts that, when you click on them say "LOL PTA meeting is this Thursday, and we need someone to bring coffee." That decision is being made by a person who you should be able to find and share your concern with.

Re: Teens inundated with phone prompts day and night, research finds

#75
post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You handed your 11 year old a smartphone? That’s brave. My parents handed me one when I was in 9th grade.

I don’t know how long ago that was so it’s hard to say “things are different now”, but my 11 year old can’t take the school bus without having a mobile app for her ticket.

How is that even legal? School buses are provided in part as a service to low-income families. Who decided it was okay to require parents of middle schoolers to shell out for a smart phone for their kids?

Re: Teens inundated with phone prompts day and night, research finds

#76
post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's been asking me about these and from what it tells me on my phone I don't understand what they are getting at. But more importantly, how does it differentiate between "Your delivery has arrived" and "this weekend, 10% off all deliveries paid with mastercard from chase banks"

On android, each app's notifications are categorized. For, say, Uber, I can enable the obvious useful notifications and can disable promotional notifications. Presumably Google penalizes ignoring or abusing this system.

Hahahahaha - sorry, the mere suggestion that Google cares enough about this to "penalize" anyone who ignores this system is actually really funny to me. No, of course they don't do any such thing. The system is entirely and completely optional, and developers have long ago realized that actually using it is to their own detriment, because users will just block the marketing notifications but leave the important ones, so they just bundle everything together. I have actually messaged several developers of some of the apps I use if they can fix this exact thing and the response has always been "sorry we don't have the technical ability to do this" which is obviously complete nonsense. But no, there isn't any penalty for not doing this from google.

Re: Teens inundated with phone prompts day and night, research finds

#77
post #26

One of the things I love about Android is the extremely granular controls on app notifications, it allows me to fine tune the disruption level of particular types of alerts or messages from app to app so that I'm only alerted to stuff I care about. edit: https://i.imgur.com/w3A9Bge.png

It's cool, but some apps (like food delivery apps) conflate all notifications into a single category, probably in an attemp to abuse the system.

I see the 'food delivery app' come up a few times in this thread. Do you really need an app to use such services in some countries? Whenever I want to order a meal for delivery I just go to the restaurant's website, or sometimes look at the list of available restaurants in Thuisbezorgd.nl (part of the company which owns Grubhub etc.) and then visit the restaurant website and order there. If there's something that needs addressing, the restaurant just calls me (which is almost never). I can't imagine installing a bunch of dedicated apps for services which just require my money and some basic interface.

Re: Teens inundated with phone prompts day and night, research finds

#78

I run my phone on DND all day, everyday and block notifications from almost all apps. The amount of garbage we have vying for our attention on an hourly basis is overwhelming sometimes. The worst is the apps where you do want notifications on, like your food delivery apps so you know when your food is at the door, but those companies take that as an invite to send you daily marketing notifications and it all feels li…

I once tried disabling every notification at the app level, but it was hopeless. After going DND 24/7, my quality of life has measurably improved. I'd never go back.

Re: Teens inundated with phone prompts day and night, research finds

#79

I run my phone on DND all day, everyday and block notifications from almost all apps. The amount of garbage we have vying for our attention on an hourly basis is overwhelming sometimes. The worst is the apps where you do want notifications on, like your food delivery apps so you know when your food is at the door, but those companies take that as an invite to send you daily marketing notifications and it all feels li…

It is a breach of trust. I give apps access to my immediate attention so they can notify me of things that need my attention. Not for telling me about their new features or some crappy partner deal.

For this reason I have a one strike policy for apps. One marketing notification and permissions are revoked. Missing out on surprisingly little although it has made me stop using some services entirely.

Re: Teens inundated with phone prompts day and night, research finds

#80
Many sites ask me (just after the cookies) if they can "send me notifications". I always opt to block of course.

However every place I shop at takes the sales conversation as an invite to a marketing conversation. That's 90% of my emails.

If business was a dog it would be flatulent.

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