This reads like it was written by someone who doesn't understand that most notifications can and should be turned off. Like this:
> My notification center shows texts from my family group chat next to a bunch of New York Times push alerts, a calendar reminder for a meeting I had earlier today, announcements of new episodes of several podcasts I follow, and multiple ads from DoorDash suggesting that I order from Chick-fil-A, Walgreens, and other stores.
Well, yeah, no wonder your actual relationships are getting lost in there. The solution is block notifications from all that stuff except the group chat and the calendar reminder (assuming you actually needed to see it before the event occurred). For lower-priority stuff that you might still conceivably care about (like NYT), get the info by email and turn off email notifications. Then check this lower-priority stuff on a pull basis, by opening your email app, seeing if there's anything you feel like looking at, and deleting the rest.
I'm flabbergasted every time I have occasion to look at someone else's phone or tablet and see the deluge of notifications they're getting. This isn't even just about social stuff, it's a general watering-down of the idea of "notification". If most notifications are meaningless, they all become meaningless because finding the meaningful ones is like looking for a needle in a needlestack.
There's still a legit point to be made about how we've gotten into this notification maelstrom, and how to get out of it. And to some extent this problem can bleed into areas outside of notifications (e.g., an email inbox in which the real emails from your friends are lost in a sea of ads), so maybe it's about information overload rather than notification overload. But I think this article is missing that the real issue here is the shift to push-based consumption rather than pull-based.
BrenBarn•20h ago
> My notification center shows texts from my family group chat next to a bunch of New York Times push alerts, a calendar reminder for a meeting I had earlier today, announcements of new episodes of several podcasts I follow, and multiple ads from DoorDash suggesting that I order from Chick-fil-A, Walgreens, and other stores.
Well, yeah, no wonder your actual relationships are getting lost in there. The solution is block notifications from all that stuff except the group chat and the calendar reminder (assuming you actually needed to see it before the event occurred). For lower-priority stuff that you might still conceivably care about (like NYT), get the info by email and turn off email notifications. Then check this lower-priority stuff on a pull basis, by opening your email app, seeing if there's anything you feel like looking at, and deleting the rest.
I'm flabbergasted every time I have occasion to look at someone else's phone or tablet and see the deluge of notifications they're getting. This isn't even just about social stuff, it's a general watering-down of the idea of "notification". If most notifications are meaningless, they all become meaningless because finding the meaningful ones is like looking for a needle in a needlestack.
There's still a legit point to be made about how we've gotten into this notification maelstrom, and how to get out of it. And to some extent this problem can bleed into areas outside of notifications (e.g., an email inbox in which the real emails from your friends are lost in a sea of ads), so maybe it's about information overload rather than notification overload. But I think this article is missing that the real issue here is the shift to push-based consumption rather than pull-based.