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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

#281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use Glasswire (Android) and block apps from accesing the internet, when not using them (e.g. Uber). It's a bit of pain to turn it on before use, and off again afterwards, but I've realized it's much less stressful than having notifications popping up at all times. YMMV

As someone who hasn’t used android in 10 years, what you are describing seems like a warzone

Depends what apps you use and notification settings, ie I don't have any uber app and my notifications are clean, just what I need.

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

#282
post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Society’s stated preference is things like healthy food, paying as opposed to ads (not being the product), and no notifications. Society’s revealed preference is McDonald’s, watching YouTube ads, and letting apps send whatever notifications they want to. In general people care about the trade offs between cost and convenience, between cost and style, and not at all about anything so mundane as value, privacy, or peac…

> Society’s revealed preference is McDonald’s Without government restrictions, is society's revealed preference also widespread use of hard drugs? Ever since opium wars, unadressed drug use was a problem that required active internevtion.

Active interventions gave us war on drugs with hundreds of thousands of civilians dead (or rather millions if you count things like oxycontin -> fentanyl and other similar side effects), tens if not hundreds of millions of lives fucked up, and seeing a superpower losing a war with... some chemicals. No thank you

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

#283
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 "OM…

[deleted]

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

#284

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…

Well, Apple is trying a 'do as I say, not as I do' approach, which isn't exactly working.

For example I got an Apple Music notification the other day telling me how awesome the new Classic Music App is, or how the new season of whatever show is available in Apple TV+ is just fresh out of the oven.

I like their products, and even their services, but in this particular case, they're as bad as Uber, just at a different degree (I used to get an Uber Eats notification everyday until I uninstalled the app)

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

#285
post #17

Sometimes I will be having a conversation with someone and then their phone will buzz or make some sound and the person's attention will shift entirely to the phone. I don't think people realize the effect these gadgets have on their cognition. I have a phone but it is always on silent. I've decided that it is not acceptable to remotely hijack my attention. No notification on my phone sent by some corporation is ever…

Yeah, and it’s also incredibly rude. Like, we’re having lunch together in person, and mid-sentence, they disappear into their phone for minutes at a time. I stop hanging out with these types of people. If online bullshit is more important than actual real life, what is even the point? I leave on notifications for calls and calendar events. That’s it. Texts are silenced but appear on the lock screen. Everything else i…

> I stop hanging out with these types of people.

It's a natural reaction, but these people are actually suffering from an addiction and for at least some of them (those who can take remarks and act on them) it's better to tell them in a friendly way that you are having a discussion.

Most people are aware that cutting off a discussion is impolite and undesirable, they just don't realise they're doing it.

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

#286
post #35
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…

I just checked and there are 16 messages from one school in the last 7 days. The other school have managed 11. Those are emails, containing PDFs, containing important dates, if you can find them.

I dream that one day organizations will learn that you can in fact just put your message in plain text in the message body, rather than a 1MB PDF or docx

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

#287
post #17

Sometimes I will be having a conversation with someone and then their phone will buzz or make some sound and the person's attention will shift entirely to the phone. I don't think people realize the effect these gadgets have on their cognition. I have a phone but it is always on silent. I've decided that it is not acceptable to remotely hijack my attention. No notification on my phone sent by some corporation is ever…

Yeah, and it’s also incredibly rude. Like, we’re having lunch together in person, and mid-sentence, they disappear into their phone for minutes at a time. I stop hanging out with these types of people. If online bullshit is more important than actual real life, what is even the point? I leave on notifications for calls and calendar events. That’s it. Texts are silenced but appear on the lock screen. Everything else i…

How do you know it's online bullshit and not a time-sensitive message from family? I'd never do it mid-sentance, but if I hear my Whatsapp notification tone then I will make a mental note to check that fairly soon, because sometimes it is something important

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

#288
While this problem applies to everyone, it unfortunately affects younger brains FAR more than mature brains. I think Jonathan Haidt's work said kids shouldn't be having these kinds of technological interactions and prompts until at least the age of 15/16.

Has anyone found any 'solutions' when managing technology with their kids? A colleague of mine has just a blanket rule of no smart phones until they're 14 and then no social media such as tiktok. His kids seem to respect it because they now see how silly everyone looks on their smartphones the whole time (having not been indoctrinated during their early teens).

Any other recommendations?

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

#289
post #223

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…

> 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 It really feels like apps should be required by App Store policy to separate out their notifications into "delivery channels": at least, one channel for urgent/timely notifications, and a separate channel for "something has changed, no need to check right now"…

In the EU we had the option to opt out of marketing messaging when signing up for services for a long time. Some services (mainly telco's) punish you with an extra fee for doing that, but it's still worth it.

I just realized that Uber and Tinder spam me with such marketing messages and I don't remember ever giving them consent for that.

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

#290
> half of 11- to 17-year-olds get at least 237 notifications a day. Some get nearly 5,000 in 24 hours

> Such a "highly stimulating environment" may affect kids' "cognitive ability, attention span and memory during a time when their brains are still developing,” Maxwell said. “What are the long-term consequences? I don't think we know."

Then why are 11- to 17-year-olds even allowed near a smartphone?

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