Notification Overload

Notification- the action of notifying someone or something. It is something many of us rely on for our phones and if we don’t receive a notification then we never got it! “I called you like 3 times last night.” “Well, I don’t have anything on my phone, so no you didn’t.” We are constantly waiting for our phones to light up, vibrate, ring, and even flash to let us know that our devices needs our attention. Even if our devices didn’t light up or vibrate, we still check to see if something is there, something we might have missed. 

            As a working college student, I rely on my phone more than I think. I view my weekly and bi-weekly schedules on two different apps, I message managers and co-workers through text messaging and other apps, I have four different email apps (one for school, one for G-mail, one for iCloud, and one for general life), then lastly I have my social media’s. The social media apps definitely do take most of my time, however without my phone and certain apps, it would affect my work life. Not to mention one job specifically uses IMessage every single day to send it drink orders and send massive group chats.  If you don’t have an IPhone, then you simply just won’t be in those group chats and the managers would have to text you individually. I know, it is silly. This has actually forced some co-workers to switch from Android to Apple, however this is not conversation about what kind of phone it is but what phones do to us. 

            Notifications are important concerning education and careers. However, over the last couple of years, I have grown to despise notifications. Especially notifications from social media like snap chat. For one, why do we need to be notified a person is typing/messaging you? This means for every person you are specifically messaging on Snapchat there are two notifications. This used to not be an issue but at some point my friends and I migrated to only using Snapchat which meant constant and double notifications from them. After 5 years of college and constant studying for big exams, hearing and seeing my phone constantly notifying me I had enough and did something I didn’t think I would ever need to do. I turned off my notifications from Snapchat. For some, this might make them uncomfortable and for some this might make them feel liberated. I just know it feels so much better to not constantly have these Snapchat notifications on my phone anymore. However, I have noticed after almost a year of having them off, I tend to pick up my phone, unlock it, and then check to see if anyone snapped me. I still can’t figure out which one is technically better but I do now it has helped my studying habits and my annoyance level of all these notifications decreased. Another thing that I noticed after turning off Snapchat notifications was that I started to receive more notifications from other social medias! Simple one’s like so and so just went LIVE!, so and so just posted a fleet (Twitter story) watch it before it disappears, or so and so hasn’t posted in a while and they just posted! I’m sorry but I do not care if this person just posted or is going live. If I did care I would ask to be notified and instead I’m getting these unwanted notifications and distractions during my day. It is almost like my phone knew I didn’t want to be bothered anymore so decided to generate these knew notifications to hopefully get my to click on a social media app. 

            During class discussions, no one seemed to be bothered about notifications and some brought up how easy it is to simply just turn off the notifications on Settings. The professor kept pushing and pushing about how difficult it actually is to turn off notifications and how it should be a lot easier to do it. But most of us just didn’t feel the same since we utilize turning the notifications off and/or using the Do Not Disturb feature on our phones. However, not everyone has that privilege of completely silencing their phones due to their jobs, family, and emergencies so the question lies, why is it that we have to take those extra steps to stop receiving unwanted and unnecessary notifications? My professor asked why isn’t there just one button people can click to turn off these notifications. For obvious reasons, apps make it to be extra steps because if it was easier then this means less attention on their apps and less distractions which could possibly mean less distraction time on their phones. 

            This issue might not even sound like a problem to you or it might sound like an issue to you. Some people probably don’t even notice they are constantly receiving notifications to distract them and others do notice and despise them. After all this, I just know that if you don’t want these notifications sometimes it is better to go to the source and switch off which notifications you don’t want. Even on apps like text messaging, if you don’t want to receive messages from certain people or group chats there is the way to silence those specific chats. Or if you can, just switch the whole phone off and take a break!