For a year or so I have been struggling with my relationship with my phone.
I am on it far too much, doing far too much of nothing. Hours have passed, and I have achieved nothing. I have learned nothing.
A Slippery Slope
It starts with a notification; a message, an email, a shipping alert. Then, I notice that I have other notifications that need my attention. Finally, I open Reddit, or YouTube, and I am sucked into the rapids of mindless endless scrolling.
Why did I open my phone? Where did the last two hours go?
I’m sure many people have this same issue; the human dopamine response rewired against our best interests, getting us to ‘fix’ the little red blob by granting each application some attention.
Well for the last two months I have had all notifications disabled.
Has it helped? Yes.
The Brand Betrayal
In disabling all notifications, I have found that companies are swift in betraying any granted trust, in order to draw me into their applications.
Let’s take M&S, a retailer in the UK:
I wanted a pair of trousers, and they were out of stock. ‘Remind me when back in stock’ the button said. But alas, I was informed that the only way I could be reminded was if I re-enabled notifications1.
Alright, I said to myself. I do need that pair of trousers, as I damaged the pair they are to replace. So I re-enabled notifications.
One day.
One day, was all it took for me to get my first notification about a sale they were running. The trust I had given them to remind me of something I needed was being used to push advertisements at me2.
Directors everywhere must be laughing themselves to the bank that we volunteer to carry a billboard around in our pockets for them to push adverts at us whenever they please.
Now this didn’t use to be a massive problem, but literally everything now needs an application, so the effect is compounding.
Want to not get ripped off when doing your weekly shop? Well you need an application. That application will probably be allowed to generate notifications, and as such, will be able to demand your attention whenever its owner feels like it.
Are you a conscientious shopper who might rotate between a few shops to save money? Well you need an application for each one. Don’t like it? Enjoy paying 20% more than someone who loves it.
This isn’t even limited to supermarkets. Some stores (looking at you IKEA) no longer have physical ways of collecting loyalty points or discounts.
Loyalty now only comes with an app, it seems.
What I allow through?
Notifications are not all born the same. Some make the phone vibrate, whereas most are just a number on a red-blob3 above the app icon.
After my great application and notification purge of 2026, nothing will make my phone vibrate except a phone call from a known number, or activity on my bank account4.
If something is crushingly urgent, then someone can phone me. Otherwise, it can wait until I check. Not too long ago, you had to wait until someone got home before you could contact them. I figure, if we could survive that, I can survive this.
No applications get red-blob privilege apart from messaging applications like Proton Mail, Signal, or Discord. Oh, and Duolingo.
I did consider allowing eBay, Amazon, and other delivery applications the ability to show notification blobs, but decided that I don’t need to be drawn into buying more things. If I order something, I get email updates.
The Results
There is no scientific data to wave around here, but I can say that a lot of the negative ‘pickup’ behaviour I was exhibiting has vanished. I’m not pulling my phone out on dog walks, or at work. I am not idly pulling out my phone during conversations or meals.
When I get back from a walk, or back from work, I check in on group chats, or emails; when I want. This does mean it might be hours before I answer a question, but if the question was urgent, it would have been asked on a phone call.
I still need to work on my phone use in the evenings and weekends. Leaving more time to concentrate on things which have value, like reading, or writing.
But it’s all a journey. One step at a time.
Header Image Credit: Active Notifications © Theus Falcão released under CC BY-NC 2.0.