Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Teens inundated with phone prompts day and night, research finds

nbcnews.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

291–300 of 438 posts

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

#291

Post by astrange »

saganus wrote: post #247
FridgeSeal wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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

That wouldn't stop iOS notifications; those are pushed from Uber's servers to the phone, not to the app.

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

#292

Post by astrange »

corobo wrote: post #196
jacobsimon wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe Apple should add a similar distinction between transactional and marketing notifications as we have with email.

It used to be against App Store TOS to send marketing notifications full stop. Apple isn't interested in fixing this, they allowed it to happen in the first place.

They can't fix it because governments would consider it anti-competitive. Same reason the browser can't come with an adblocker.

Similarly, a cookie blocker can't be a domain blacklist because the people on the list could sue, but it can be an obfusticated ML model.

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

#293

Post by sznio »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #51
aidos wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

At least they are e-mails. Schools and kindergartens in Poland all switched over to some garbage SaaS that incorporates a half-assed, barely functioning faux-e-mail service, so I have to actually log in to their confusing and ad-infested website every other day and check if the facility sent something new. I would love it if we were using e-mails instead.

>Schools and kindergartens in Poland all switched over to some garbage SaaS that incorporates a half-assed, barely functioning faux-e-mail service

Ahhh, Librus. Worse than useless.

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

#294

Post by weikju »

HlessClaudesman wrote: post #266
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.

I have a zero strike policy: no social media, no games, no notifications. My phone is a tool, not a boss.

This. It’s not even worth playing the one strike game anymore, waste of time.

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

#295

Post by sznio »

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…

> I call him and he doesn't reply. Why? Coze he turns the sound volume off, just so he can have some peace of mind. Otherwise it's "ping ping ping ping", relentlessly throughout the day and night.

Same for me. I usually call people back after an hour or two when I check my phone. I fucking wish Android had an option to disable ALL notifications BUT all calls.

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

#296

Post by Nursie »

dvngnt_ wrote: post #199
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.

on android this is a solved problem via notification categories.

These exist on ios too, but apps don't always respect them and will occasionally push 'important' marketing messages alongside the functional stuff.

In general this is a fast way off my handset.

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

#297

Post by notahacker »

nucleardog wrote: post #242
jacquesm wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but good luck getting those people to see things your way.

You don’t need to. “I don’t use email anymore. I need you to communicate any important information about my child’s education to me through other means. Would you rather send notices home with my child or call my home phone?” Or some variant thereof. “I reviewed the privacy policy and have serious concerns, no longer agree with the terms of use and cannot use this platform.” (I’m sure if you go read it it won’t even…

> Once someone has to make an active decision to contact you instead of just mass-spamming the entire school with a button press I guarantee nobody goes “Yeah, I really should call jacquesm and ask if he can bring coffee to the PTA meeting.

Instead, they make the decision to call you at 3:30pm to inform you that your child needs picking up asap today when they realise your kid hasn't been picked up yet, whilst every other parent found out about the need to arrange an earlier pickup in advance via the after school club's mailing list.

This may be more inconvenient than receiving a few irrelevant emails. Other stuff like being the only kid not in fancy dress or sports kit because nobody would ring you about that even if they were competent at handling the essential stuff may only be inconvenient for your child, of course.

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

#298

Post by jjgreen »

seszett wrote: post #285
wallhack wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I admire your positive attitude, but it's similar to smackheads, they're just no fun to be around. "Have you thought of taking less Heroin" won't cut it.

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

#299

Post by hiAndrewQuinn »

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…

>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 interest.

Doesn't this imply, though, that there is some kind of market force which would allow such a competitor who isn't doing that to grab market share in the first place? What happens to that market share when the competitor eventually decides to change their trajectory - does it just disappear?

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

#300

Post by tsukikage »

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…

One issue is that things don't stay DND or blocked. All the apps update individually, and also every few months the vendor publishes a new OS update with yet more enshittification to turn off (where you even can! Search for how to turn off "at a glance" to see a tide of consumer misery and frustration. The vendor has important awesome things they want to do with your device, and only occasionally do those happen to align with the boring unimportant everyday activities /you/ want to use your device for.)

I would pay serious money for an ecosystem that promised no enshittification creep, but sadly that is not on the cards.

Post reply on HN