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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

#351

Post by liquidpele »

saiya-jin wrote: post #307
liquidpele wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

A radical idea - maybe kids, if they really have to have a smart phone, should not have any credit card stored in it? I've only heard about fuckups when this is allowed. Unless they have to pay ie for their bus rides or lunches via some idiotic app, then... some extremely limited debit card with no chance going below 0 maybe?

Sure, but apple requires one to be linked to use the phone. So…

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

#352

Post by chrismorgan »

jbverschoor wrote: post #43
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.

There's no way to flag spam / marketing. Uber for example occasionally sends marketing. But you can't really disable notifications. Instead, they (large companies) should just pay x cent per notification to Apple (not the user, because that would be seen as credit, eliminating the purpose)

So long as spam legislation applies to these notifications¹, you don’t need to: in theory you just report it to the relevant enforcement body, and they get fined heavily until they do something about it (which, under most sets of spam legislation, will start by requiring that these sorts of messages be opt-in only).

—⁂—

¹ I vaguely recall hearing that EU spam legislation would apply to notifications, but I may be wrong or misremembering. For my home jurisdiction of Australia, the Spam Act 2003 may or may not cover them; it depends on whether these things count as “electronic messages”, a term which is defined in the Act as “a message sent: (a) using: (i) an internet carriage service; or (ii) any other listed carriage service; and (b) to an electronic address in connection with: (i) an email account; or (ii) an instant messaging account; or (iii) a telephone account; or (iv) a similar account.” As a technologist, I would expect push notifications—that is, notifications sent by the app provider’s server via Apple/whoever servers to your device—to meet this classification; but that it would be less clear-cut with notifications generated directly by the app, as there’s not so obviously an electronic address involved.

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

#353

Post by whywhywhywhy »

haltist wrote: 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…

I started just sitting there silent and waiting for them to finish and I've found it pretty successful in getting them to stop doing it.

Usually people use someone looking at their phone as an excuse to pull theirs out and start playing with it. Think refusing to do that yourself and just waiting for them to stop messing with it sends enough of a message.

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

#354

Post by delfinom »

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 think Shell, the gas station chain, has a notification category on android as "Pump updates" which gives silly pump statuses, but they started sending credit card offers under Pump updates. Jackasses.

I like to use the apps to activate pumps to avoid card skimming but lol I'll just use the other gas station chains not run by disrespectful corporate (even though I could just block the notifications in Android)

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

#355

Post by delfinom »

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…

In Android/Google land, notifications have self declared categories.

But at first, the app must ask you for notification permission to send any notification in the first place.

You can then turn on/off the self declared notification categories at the Android level but apps can be dicks and either not use the categories or misuse them.

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

#356

Post by civilized »

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…

Several of the replies to this comment are disappointing. They provide no evidence that they know anything about the commenter, their situation, or parenting, and yet they feel qualified to jump to the conclusion that the commenter is to blame for this situation.

Why not be more respectful? Parenting is hard. Maybe ask some polite, open-ended questions before jumping in as yet another judgmental stranger from the internet with zero skin in the game.

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

#357

Post by this_steve_j »

dataflow wrote: post #92
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.

Starbucks is like this. They deliberately bundle together "Promotions & Order Status" to make sure you receive their junk.

I use a screenshot of the payment barcode from the Starbucks app when I’m in the store to pay. I do not want it on my phone. It seems to be constantly bombarding my wife’s phone with trivial prompts and notifications.

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

#358

Post by TeMPOraL »

sznio wrote: post #293
TeMPOraL wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The one and only.

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

#359

Post by deafpolygon »

raverbashing wrote: post #259
kQq9oHeAz6wLLS wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the answer. Money talks, so give your money to businesses that earn it. "But it's not as convenient!" I hear some yell. Then it's obviously not enough of a bother to you, so just suck it up and deal with their bad behavior. Because until you take your money elsewhere, nothing will change. And why should it? They obviously haven't crossed a line for enough people. Which means it'll just get worse.

Yeah when I hear "it's not convenient" what I actually hear is "I'm too lazy for that" Why do you even need a Starbucks app in the first place? Get a physical loyalty card. Or, you know, have coffee at home

> Or, you know, have coffee at home

Nescafe Gold Instant coffee. Coffee is coffee, and this one tastes better than Starbucks'

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

#360

Post by [deleted] »

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…

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