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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

#261

Post by kubb »

tivert wrote: post #132
jacquesm wrote: 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…

> Tech should serve us It should , but it's becoming more and more obvious that it won't and can't . Literally every economic incentive it pushing towards 1) making it crappier until it's just good enough to buy, 2) maximally exploiting its users. The market won't save us, because a competitor who tries to gain market-share by not doing that crap will eventually turn around and join in the fun, once it's in their int…

Regulation is a proven and tested way to combat the inefficiency of free markets.

Literally, we could start fining phone manufacturers who allow notifications that aren’t direct messages.

Ban ads from public spaces while we’re at it.

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

#262

Post by mr_mitm »

don-code wrote: post #228
mr_mitm wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's why I believe phone calls should be considered intrusive these days. Unless it's an emergency or you're my mom, you should send a text. I'm not going to notice anyway unless I'm looking at my phone while you call.

I also believe this. The counterpoint was made to me by a close friend who prefers to call (I also have friends who _only_ call) - "you really only engage people on your own terms" - which in some ways makes me a bad friend.

Well why not agree on a time to call via text so it can be on both parties terms. Or speak on my voicemail if they absolutely insist on calling, as I probably won't pick up.

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

#263

Post by Freak_NL »

jabroni_salad wrote: post #209
Freak_NL wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 nee…

Where I live, the only restaurants that offer delivery are Chinese and Pizza, and this is pretty typical for most locales. What grubhub did was antagonistically create delivery services for literally every restaurant and collect those menus into their own app. If the restaurant doesn't cooperate they will just call the place and pretend to be a customer. They also buy ads so that when you search for you will get a dy…

I didn't know that. That's way beyond what Just Eat/Takeaway does in Europe. They have a predatory business model of course; restaurants either join them, or loose customers accustomed to seeing every available delivery option in one place, but if a restaurant doesn't want them, they don't resort to such tricks (I don't think they could without falling foul of some regulations, mainly the issue of reselling a product already taxed in a business to consumer transaction).

A lot of restaurants are fighting back and do join Thuisbezorgd and whatever local iteration Just Eat/Takeaway has, but they also ask their customers to use their own website instead. It saves them a lot of money.

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

#264

Post by sgt »

pwython wrote: post #24
root_axis wrote: post #7

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

As an iPhone user, I turn off notifications for mostly every app except for Reminders, Calendar, etc time-sensitive stuff. For specific third-party apps that may also require important push notifications (eg. Uber), I can just go into the app and turn off "marketing/promo" notifications or whatever.

I also do this. The granularity of notifications and the ease of use in iOS is outstanding.

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

#265

Post by madaxe_again »

donmcronald wrote: post #179
alexanderchr wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That's exactly what I do! Google and Apple could instantly fix the problem (of co-mingling essential and marketing notifications) if they wanted to . The current situation is like getting opted in to "street signs and flashing billboards". It's stupid.

This is not a problem from their perspective - it is a revenue centre.

They’re doing the psychological equivalent of slash-and-burn deforestation - there won’t be a next generation of engineers, just a legion of addicts with attention spans measured in microseconds, but it’s profitable this quarter, and that’s all that matters.

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

#266

Post by HlessClaudesman »

alexanderchr wrote: post #79
soultrees wrote: post #4

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.

I have a zero strike policy: no social media, no games, no notifications.

My phone is a tool, not a boss.

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

#267

Post by theshrike79 »

sergiomattei wrote: post #58
MichaelRo wrote: post #38

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…

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

My kid got a smart phone at age 7 when they started school.

It's still mostly in their backpack and they regularly miss calls and messages from friends because it's always on mute and still in the school bag even though it's already evening =)

You need to normalise these things and teach how to manage it from an early age.

Like screen time is a completely normal thing in our family, it has been activated since the second they got the phone. Every app category has a specific daily screen time - the only ones with no limits are communication tools and educational apps.

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

#268

Post by jlnho »

anigbrowl wrote: post #192
thenerdhead wrote: post #34

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…

It is something that is solved with "less tech" or "no tech" entirely. i don't believe that. I love technology and always want to have access to a computer (although I also love leaving it off and using paper or analog tools). But I have a pretty unforgiving standard for people-misusing-technology. Last week I went into a store I hadn't seen before, specializing in imported Asian liquors, drinks, cocktail stuff. I de…

"If you're polite, nobody cares."

But what's the point if nobody cares?

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

#269

Post by ClumsyPilot »

FridgeSeal wrote: post #202
donmcronald wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's exactly what I do! Google and Apple could instantly fix the problem (of co-mingling essential and marketing notifications) if they wanted to . The current situation is like getting opted in to "street signs and flashing billboards". It's stupid.

I have an iOS device, so can’t speak for Google, but I suspect that’s what Apple has been _trying_ to do. The problem is that these apps are essentially adversarial in their notifications. If you have a mechanism for “only the most essential notifications”, then they simply mark all their notifications as “essential” (looking at you Uber). Try to limit their notifications using “only is summary” or disabling them and…

> then they simply mark all their notifications as “essential"

That's like getting spam mail from your bank. In the physical world this would be illegal

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