Digital Detoxing #2: Turn Off Your Notifications

Brrrr….

Brrrr....

You feel your phone vibrate in your pocket. You hear the familiar ‘Ping’ sound as another notification pops up on your lock screen. Instinctively, you take hold of your phone and swipe down, trying to see if it was an email, a whatsapp, or a new video on youtube. But no, it was just an offer to get ‘10 percent off on your next purchase’.

You sigh, feel slightly annoyed and swipe right to dismiss the notification. All-in-all, that interaction with your phone hardly took five seconds. So no harm done, right? What's five seconds in a day?

But you know it was not just that one notification. It never is. We take it to be normal these days, but we are inundated with our phones buzzing each and every hour of the day. Most of us pick it up first thing in the morning as we groggily get out of bed, and it is the last thing we see as we fall asleep. In fact, it does not even let us sleep.

Just as you are dozing off, you hear a buzz, and see the screen light up in the darkness. And like moths drawn to a flame you pick up your phone again, trying to see what notification has come.

So why do we do this? Why are we instinctively drawn towards our phones each time they buzz away. Simply put, we are addicted. The term for such behavior is called ‘Notification Anxiety’. It means that when we receive a notification on our phones, we have to see what it is immediately, and that causes us anxiety.

Why does this happen? Well, whenever a notification arrives, the body releases the stress hormone cortisol, which is also called the fight-or-flight hormone. Constant notifications put the brain in a state of high-alert, and this tensed state is released only when you are able to read the notification. When we check the notification, it acts like a reward for the brain and encourages repetition of the behaviour.

There are different levels to this addiction, but in some cases it can get so extreme that we experience what are called ‘Phantom Notifications’, whereby we imagine a notification coming to our phone when it is in our hand, our pocket or even our handbag.

I had this problem for a long time, and would get anxious even when I heard my phone buzz in another room. So what can we do to alleviate the problem? Well, I will list out the steps which worked for me, and how you can implement such corrective measures in your own life. Since I use android phones, the measures suggested would apply to such devices.

How to reduce Phone Notifications:

1. The first step is to first know what apps are sending you the most number of notifications so you can target those apps first. For this, you need to find the app called ‘Digital Wellbeing’ in your android phone. If you have a phone which is less than 3 years old, the app can be found under the ‘Settings’ menu of your phone. Open Settings and scroll down until you find Digital Wellbeing.

2. Once you have opened the app, go down and click on the ‘notifications’ button. It will show you how many notifications you have received week-by-week for each app in descending order.

3. Now that you know what apps to target, how do you go about reducing their notifications. I will show you the steps I use for the most popular apps. Once you know how to reduce the notifications for those apps, the same steps can be applied to the specific apps that you have on your phones.

Whatsapp:

• A big problem on whatsapp is that the groups we belong to send a lot of notifications our way. To silence such notifications, take the following steps

• Open Whatsapp on your phone

• Select the group whose notifications you wish to silence by pressing and holding down for a couple of seconds

• Tap on the Mute notification icon highlighted above

• Select the duration for which you wish to mute notifications. I normally leave it at one year. Also uncheck the ‘Show Notifications’ checkbox if you do not wish for the notifications to show up on your lock screen

• Select ‘Ok’

• Now the notifications will be muted and your phone will not buzz whenever notifications come from that particular group

• You can also use the same steps to mute notifications from individual contacts

Gmail:

• Open the Settings Menu on your phone

• Scroll down till you and select the ‘Notifications’ Option

• Now this will appear a little bit different on everyones phone but the steps should be the same

• You should see a list of all the notifications you have received, sorted by Most Recent

• Find the Gmail app in the list and click on it

• You would be taken to a screen which shows your different Gmail accounts (if you have more than one) and if notifications are checked on for each account

• Here you can choose to either turn off notifications for a particular account by selecting the toggle button highlighted, or turn off notifications from all your accounts by toggling the ‘Show Notifications’ button at the top

The above steps can be used for most other apps. Some apps give you the option to to disable certain notifications while allowing others, while others only give you a basic option to enable or disable all notifications from the app. Let me show you two more examples of how I select which notifications I want from the apps in question:

• Firstly, for Youtube, I want to know if there are new videos for the channels I subscribe to, but not be bombarded with notifications about live streams, comments or recommendations. So I accordingly deselect those options, while keeping the others enabled.

• Or for Flipkart, I want to get notifications about updates on my orders shipment, while disabling unnecessary notifications like Flipkart community, deals and offers. So I disable those options while leaving the ‘Show Notifications’ option enabled for My Orders.

I strongly recommend you take a few minutes to go through the steps above and implement them in your own devices to reduce Non-Essential notifications from your apps. I am not advocating disabling all notifications. You could leave on notifications for work related messages or emails for instance.

I would highly encourage you to disable non-essential notifications though. Over a few days, you would find that you don’t need to keep constantly checking your phone, and the small time invested here will pay huge dividends in the form of reduced anxiety and increased peace-of-mind.