Technology has created a barrage of notifications and interactions
wired.com
wired.com
> Moving to the woods and going full Thoreau, for most of us, is simply not an option. The only long-term fix is making the background into foreground: calling out the exact ways digital technologies have colonized our lives, aggravating and expanding our burnout in the name of efficiency.
Technology didn't colonize anything, you invited over an annoying house guest that you refuse to kick out. Turn off your phone and go pet a dog. You'll be better for it.
Let’s not pretend like technology isn’t vigorously A/B testing its way into being as psychologically addicting as possible.
And that's why I consider most advertising a malicious act.
Only solution is to aggressively deny all push notification requests
One cat-and-mouse solution here might be the “know your location” notifier that iOS uses - allow push notifications only for today.
FWIW, I haven't been using Facebook much for the past couple of years. But - beyond unfollowing a bunch of pages and killing notificaitons - it didn't come from a conscious decisions. Over time, my feed became mostly ads and news articles, as Facebook tweaked their algos; meanwhile, most people I know retreated to other social networks. Too many to track at the same time. I also got more busy and focused on my immediate family. Some time ago I realized that I derive near-zero value from Facebook. My part of Fb's social graph pretty much dissolved on its own. I think this is going to be ultimately the fate of the entire graph.
Most tech professionals are in the extremely enviable position that if they hate their job, they have the opportunity to switch. I have been in jobs in the past where I dreaded going to work every day. In hindsight, the fault was my own; there is no reason I should have stayed in a job that was a bad fit for me as long as I did. I realize, and am grateful, that I can say this when many workers don't have this luxury, but also, many DO have this luxury and don't take advantage of it, or they're not willing to realize the problem is with specific things within their control to fix.
I legitimately want notifications of calendar events, missed calls, and messages on whatever screen I'm looking at now -- my desktop, my laptop, my watch, and my phone vibrating in my pocket for when I'm not looking at anything.
But once I get the message -- once I swipe left on my phone, hit "close" on my computer, or whatever, I want them all to disappear. Instead, I've got to swipe/close on every damn device. Regularly when I look at a new device, the first thing I need to do is remove notifications I've already seen. Sometimes I have to click into an app and navigate to notifications just to get the red dot to also disappear. Sometimes I have to delete an e-mail notification as well.
My desperate wish: there should be a standard across iOS, Android, SMS, dektop OS's, and e-mail to include a notification UUID with every notification, a standardized message format (user -> server) that means "dismiss everwhere", and yet another standardized message format (server -> device) that means "dimiss previous notification".
Android and iOS can build it into thier OS, and Gmail, Exchange and other e-mail providers can similarly build support for it (automatically mark the e-mail as read and archive it). Worst-case scenario, if your e-mail provider doesn't support it, you sometimes get an extra e-mail you filter out. (Or servers only bother sending the "remove existing notification" to e-mail domains that contain a flag advertising they support it.)
Any reason this wouldn't work? Or that it wouldn't make all our lives hugely better?
That's weird. Is it really that difficult on IOS?
I'm not being snarky or sarcastic, but as I don't use Apple gear, I had no idea.
On my mobile device, I just swipe down to pull up all notifications, then pull them up a bit (if necessary) to reveal a 'clear all' option, and they're all gone, both on-screen and in the status bar.
As for sharing state between all devices, that's more complicated.
I guess it would be nice, but I'm not sure I want to give whatever application that performs such actions that much access into my life. Especially if it was something controlled "in the cloud" (read: On someone else's servers). Even more so if it was owned/controlled by the user data Mafia (Google, FB, Apple, etc.)
It's the fact that every time I switch devices I have to look at my notifications, figure out if any are new or if they're all ones I've seen before on a previous device, and then clear them.
It's nothing specific to Android or iOS or PC's or Macs, the problem is the same everywhere.
And I'm not talking about any single centralized access or "mafia". The only entity with the ability to remove a notification would be the one that sent it in the first place. The notification is identified by a unique non-predictable UUID. Zero user data or privacy concerns, and security should be straightforward with existing technologies.
Maybe there should also be a "not now" mode that hides the notifications, icons and badges. Silent mode still distracts my when I use my phone as a motorcycle GPS.
Nobody forced them to: - start their day by reviewing COVID numbers - allow push-notifications from "news" apps - listen to NPR while showering - generally allow social media to dictate their mood/schedule
All of these habits are as easy to change as they are damaging.
Edit to add: In no way did I mean to belittle those who are afflicted by social media / news addiction. It's a very real problem, and such people deserve help and guidance to lessen their suffering.
Keep in mind that this may or may not be an accurate reflection of the author's personal habits. We have no indications that this is true, that each one of these actions is not exaggerated, or that they even happened in the same day.
Or even, more likely, that these are actually the habits of a fictional person that's trying to represent a huge fraction of the population. It could even be a form of criticism.
We do know that there are people sharing similar routines.
I sympathize with those who are enslaved to their devices. It's an addiction, and it often correlates with mental health issues. Such people need help and guidance – not sarcastic dismissal.
But, like any other addiction, the first step is taking responsibility. Instead of blaming the world for "hacking" your brain and sub-dividing your attention ad infinitum ... Take a step back and figure out what is (and isn't) under your control. Break the cycle. Have the courage to reject things that aren't serving you.
You're totally right about the other half though, it's got to be some kind of addiction. Her compulsion to keep "checking" things online. Checking facebook, checking instagram, checking the news, checking the likes on this, checking messages on that, checking Slack, checking E-mail, even checking her frequent flyer mile count (WTF?). What is all this checking? What on earth is so important that you keep needing to poll for status updates? This behavior seems to be beyond what one could rationally explain and I agree with you that some professional help and guidance is probably in order!
But it does encapsulate a lot of wisdom, and the first step is to admit powerlessness over the addiction.
That's what you're missing here, is that by definition addicts feel out of control of their own behavior. Without that loss of control, it's not an addiction, it's just a habit you spend a lot of time on.
Look, it's obvious this isn't a subject you know anything about, and congratulations on that. But maybe stop making confident pronouncements which don't work.
>But it does encapsulate a lot of wisdom, and the first step is to admit powerlessness over the addiction.
That's right, except about being powerless. I'm not downing AA, as it has helped many people over the years.
In fact, My brother is a friend of Bill and has been clean for 36 years. And up until the lockdowns, he still went to meetings.
However, the twelve steps aren't a panacea. In fact, some estimate[0] that only 5-8% of those who engage with AA actually end up clean and sticking with it.
I disagree with the idea that you need to "admit powerlessness." And the rest of the pseudo-religious mumbo-jumbo is just that.
Addiction is not a failure of willpower. To beat it, willpower is required, but it's often (usually) not enough.
>Look, it's obvious this isn't a subject you know anything about, and congratulations on that. But maybe stop making confident pronouncements which don't work.
It may not have been for GP, but it is for me -- not just WRT my brother -- but in my own life and issues with substance abuse.
There is no one right answer for everyone. And AA's methods, while not harmful (and often beneficial, even if the message is couched in hokey religious terms) can and does help many people. But it's not the only, nor is it the best, way to help people address addiction -- whether that be alcohol, drugs, technology or anything else.
[0] https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/04/the-irr...
Edit: Corrected estimate of success rate for AA.
The author makes a bunch of dumb, easily fixable decisions and then writes a blog post whining about them. It’s so tiresome.
Actually, she wrote a book[0] about it.
[0] https://www.amazon.com/Cant-Even-Millennials-Burnout-Generat...
Still, none of that is an excuse for making bad choices. It's hard but people can and should fight their instincts (esp when they are being exploited by others).
At least for "adults", children haven't necessarily developed enough to make choices. [With all our(USA) "think of the children", helicopter parenting, and overprotection of kids; I have no idea why parents accept advertising targeted to kids and teens? The illogic and dual standards are absolutely baffling.]
For me, by default I deny notifications to apps. Only communications (like WhatsApp/Signal/iMessages/email client) and stuff that NEEDS to notify me (like UptimeRobot). For email, I only get notifications when emails hit a certain filter. For WhatsApp, I mute all the groups.
The only problem is that when I get bored, I still want to see if I got emails, reddit notifications, Hacker News replies etc. I still open the app to cjeck then get distracted. Someone aptly compared this to a slot machine where the prize is a small rush of dopamine.
I guess it could be worse. They could be completely unaware which is what makes jokes about this kind of lifestyle land so well[1].
Although, like you say, setting and enforcing boundaries is much easier said than done.
https://www.npr.org/2020/09/19/914715440/helen-peterson-talk...
She's been making the rounds on podcasts, listening to a few of the longer-form interviews gives some depth to the story.
This specific article may not be the best introduction, though it definitely illustrates one element of the problem.
As with many essay-to-book expansions, there's aa succinct poetry to the original piece:
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/annehelenpetersen/mille...
Discussed at the time on HN:
https://www.theawl.com/2015/04/are-you-just-larping-your-job...
Here's a problem. Walk/exercise WIHTOUT devices.
Any other good advice?
I also have almost no notifications on my phone of any kind, text messages from my partner and friends is pretty much it. You may think you need notifications but you maybe surprised how little it impacts your life (expect less stress) not to have them.
I always said that I'd rather get fired than take work home, but I was never even asked.
Read the comments and it's a bunch of folks making fun of the author for "opting in". What a surprise there.
Learning from your mistakes is not irony.
Back then, Work was an inescapable paradise.
In the end, as the end of the article suggests, it's all in our heads. We can set limits if we want, and your coworkers will adjust their expectations, if it's a healthy workplace, of course.
I only check email a few times a day.
Time and focus are too valuable to be wasted on social media and distractions.
This is such a shitty, irresponsible thing to do. People die every day from car accidents and this author thinks it is funny.
then we try to regulate speed as a poor, misdirected proxy for accidents to ameliorate ourselves, because most folks don't really want to decontaminate the driving environment to be as dstraction-free as possible, which would actually reduce accidents and save lives.
Separately, when I read this paragraph, it prompted me to check my “DND while driving” settings, which for some reason were no longer enabled.
Authors can write about controversial / bad things.
Fortunately, most drivers only touch their phones at red lights, and I honestly don't mind that as much.
Totally up to the developer how they want to use the feature, but the idea is that there's bunch of different channels & that users can pick & choose from among them gives the user some control, some ability to decide for themselves what is important.
I introduced an issue for Web Notifications to add similar: https://github.com/whatwg/notifications/issues/154
In general though things are a mess. I'm talking about adding more complexity. Websites used to prompt for adding notifications, which was a pain, but now they put some HTML on screen instead to prompt for notifications, since to be friendly/secure it was decided user-interaction would be required to bring up the prompt for notifications. So websites still have harassing notifications prompts, just on the page instead of in the browser. And cookie and gdpr notifications. And a chat agent-bot pops up to ask if you have any questions. Ugh it's silly. So many affordances that all compete with one another. No standard place where they can reside, & be viewed or ignored as the user would prefer. The whole permissions model on the web has this problem: that permissions are interactive demands, versus something more passive (like living in the awesome-bar).
That's because we're dealing with malicious actors. They actively fight any attempt to make things better.
> Websites used to prompt for adding notifications, which was a pain, but now they put some HTML on screen instead to prompt for notifications, since to be friendly/secure it was decided user-interaction would be required to bring up the prompt for notifications.
The popups for adding notifications have an additional reason for being: it's because if you deny the request that's displayed by the browser/system API, the site can't ask you again. Meanwhile, if you deny their in-site/in-app popup, they get to try again. And again. And again.
> So websites still have harassing notifications prompts, just on the page instead of in the browser.
That's because they want to harass you. That's the whole point. And that's why I call these actors malicious.
> And cookie and gdpr notifications.
These are another cases in point. The way cookie laws and GDPR are structured, if you're not doing anything shady or malicious, you don't have to show any popup! You only need the popup if you really badly want to do something most of your users would prefer you don't.
The problem boils down to: most sites and apps you encounter want to abuse you in one way or another (most commonly, funnel you into a deal that's good for them but not necessarily for you, learn everything they can about you and pass it on to third parties, and/or shove ads in your face). This is not solvable at a protocol, or web standard level. It's, unfortunately, a cat and mouse game.