Turn off your notifications!

 For my first blog post I decided to write something that I strongly believe in - turning off your push notifications. After reading the statscanada survey, I found a Forbes article and thought I would share it and talk about why it resonates with me. I have had my push notification off for the majority of the social media platforms on my phone for over a year now. I decided to take a break from instagram during the pandemic and I deleted the app from my phone from about April/May 2020 until about September/October 2020. I didn't miss it. At around the same time I turned off my notifications for Snapchat, Facebook, Pinterest, TikTok, and for many other platforms and apps. The one major thing I noticed was that I was actually choosing when to go on a specific platform and engage, I wasn't being lured in. A point that Blaschka brings up in the article is that when we get a notification, our brain releases dopamine which makes us feel good, so we end up wanting more. Without notifications, you are uninterrupted and more focused on specific tasks instead of being distracted by your phone screen lighting up and having the urge to check it and being sucked into endlessly scrolling. Having them off is so beneficial to my productivity and overall mental health as I won't check instagram for sometimes days because I'm not thinking about the meaningless things people are posting about on social media.

Here's the article: https://www.forbes.com/sites/amyblaschka/2020/09/21/this-is-why-you-need-to-turn-off-social-media-notifications/?sh=3d2a1aea6690

Comments

  1. Dylan GowanlockSeptember 23, 2021 at 7:13 AM

    Hello Olivia, I enjoyed reading your post this week and I found the article you linked to be very interesting. With so much said nowadays regarding the positives and benefits of social media platforms, I feel it is equally important to keep in mind the various platform’s drawbacks. As someone who also has no notifications on my phone, I have definitely noticed an increase in productivity as well as other positive matters such as better sleep habits. Your point about being lured in stood out to me as this is how I feel these apps are designed, simply to lure more and more people into the app for longer periods of time. In my judgement, setting up boundaries in terms of engaging with social media is very important for anybody to undertake.

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  2. Annabelle SpinaSeptember 24, 2021 at 8:51 AM

    Hi Olivia!

    Great post this week! I was intrigued by your blog post as I resonate with the topic you chose! Thank you for attaching the Forbes article in your post, I gave it a read, and the article brought up some fascinating points! Like you mentioned in your post, I, too, took a break from social media during the pandemic. I found it to be a very refreshing change in my life. I have always been so used to spending most of my days checking social media, but once I deleted the apps, I also found I didn't miss them. Now that I do have social media back, I think the idea of turning my push notifications off is a great one! As you mentioned in your post, it is easy to be lured in by your Snapchat or Instagram notifications constantly going off. I will try turning off my notifications and see how much less frequently I check these applications! Thanks for the great post and suggestion!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Shanna AllimanSeptember 24, 2021 at 9:23 AM

    Hi Olivia.
    Your post was great this week! After looking at the Forbes article and the many points in your discussion post I understand why you made the choice to turn off your push notifications. You made a point that these notifications do a great job at luring us into going on the app. Turning push notifications off allowed you to have free liberty to choose when you want to visit a specific app. During school this would definitely help with productivity. Being like many other university students I am definitely addicted to my phone. I do not think I would be able to turn my push notifications off due to fomo. However, with the new IOS update when I am doing school work I put my phone on 'work' mode which silences notifications to my phone. This is something that helps me stayed focus.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Anahita KSeptember 24, 2021 at 1:18 PM

    Hey Olivia!
    I really enjoyed reading your post this week and I agree completely. The notifications I receive on my phone are what remind me to check my social media accounts and am lured in and can spend a lot of time of these apps just because I received a notification. On the days where I may not have my phone near by to receive alerts, I am not reminded to check my social and thus do not think or worry about it. This shows exactly how the notifications send a small amount of dopamine to our brain, just enough to keep us wanting more.
    Great post!

    ReplyDelete

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