Now that app makers have realized we're muting our phones and disabling app notifications, they're doing them within the apps... It creates dependency and anxiety. The best way I've found to deal with the constant prodding is to simply leave my phone at home or in the car nearby whenever I want to enjoy a day or moment. It's a device I paid for, it shouldn't cause me stress.

Google and Apple can easily set up reasonable standards for app makers, but they chose not to, because they themselves are tied to the constant financial greed of the ecosystem. There is now no way to buy a highly useful device that isn't laden with advertising capabilities, and robust enough for you to disable tracking... The only way to limit all of that is to simply leave the devices and step away from them for sanity.

Talking to real people creates more dopamine for me than the Internet does now, it's a gift... We shouldn't ever take our ability to talk in real life with people for granted, because the Internet is turning fast into a distorted reality bent on spamming us for profit and scams now more than ever, and no one there cares about the damage they do until it shows up in their own households (far too late to fix the problems they caused).