Managing notifications and setting boundaries with technology

Managing notifications and setting boundaries with technology

Mariam Hameedi

April 25, 2023

11 months ago

Remote lifestyle is trending after 2019 and we all have adapted to it whether it’s work from home, online classes, or virtual workouts. Where remote access to everything has its benefits, it has some disadvantages as well and the top con of virtual work is increased screen time. 

According to a study done by ACM, on average, adults get 63 notifications per day and most of them review them within a minute. 

According to a study of NCBI, there are several negative impacts on health, physiology, and personal life because of excessive technology use. In a study of 40,000 users, it was found that during work they were getting 200 million notifications and these notifications decreased their productivity and focus on work. 


Negative impact of notifications and technology 

There are several negative impacts of technology use some of them are: 


1. Poor vision among adults and children. 
2. Less focus on work and studies. 
3. Weak response time among kids, who need more time to process what their parents are asking them to do. 
4. Poor sleep time and restless sleep. 
5. Difficulty in managing tasks on time. 
6. Huge communication gap between parents, kids, family, and friends. 
7. Anger issues due to screen addiction. 
8. Helpless and low feelings without technology.
9. Too much time and money are spent on buying online games, gadgets, and accessories. 
10. Decreased self-confidence and decision-making by getting influenced by online influencers. 


Tips for managing notifications effectively with technology 

Here are some useful tips for setting boundaries on technology and managing your screen time. 


1. Delay view time: The chances of checking a notification within 30 seconds is 50% while the chances of checking it within 5 minutes are only 17%. Try to delay checking your notification to stay away from distractions. 

2. Make healthy boundary rules for friends and family: Make a rule of “no phone use” at your home or during your friends’ meetups. Encourage your friends and family and family members to do face-to-face conversations and live in the moment.

3. Detoxify screen time: Take some time off from your day, week or weekend without technology in a healthy clean fresh environment, maybe in a park or hill station. 


4. Start your day without a phone: Waking up and grabbing your phone is quite an unhealthy habit. Start your day without checking notifications. Do your breakfast without looking at your phone then grab it to respond to your emails and messages. 


5. Set a work boundary: Inform your employer or employees that you cannot be available all day so they can just reach out during your working hours. Limit emergency calls and emails and put your phone on DnD (Do not disturb) mode so, you cannot receive any notifications and calls during your sleep time at least. Don’t use digital alarms to wake you up, use an old alarm clock or timer to wake you up.


6. Manage app notifications: Ads and social media notifications are quite distracting. Manage your apps by selecting only a few app notifications. Mute or block people from your list who post irrelevant statuses and information on social media. 


7. Keep your phone away from you while sleeping: Keep your phone at least 10 feet away from you while sleeping as the signals might cause brain cancer according to a study. The national sleep foundation studied the sleep quality of users using their phone right before they sleep and found out that they have less restful sleep than the one who doesn’t use their phone before sleeping. 


8. Parental control: There is a feature of parental control in almost every device. Put some applications restricted to decrease your children’s screen time. You can also turn on a well-being feature or app timer that allows you to limit each application to 30 minutes or your custom time. Maybe you limit your Facebook to 30 minutes to avoid unnecessary socializing. 


9. Switch from video games to physical games: Kids these days are more interested in playing video games. They are addicted to the games and spend a lot of time and money on online games. Kids are finding it quite off to go to any Park and enjoy playing on the playgrounds. We should encourage them to play outside and introduce fun and interactive outdoor activities to gain their interest back. 


10. Encourage physical meetups: As we all know official meetings even casual friend meetings are happening on Zoom. It was useful and a necessity during a pandemic. However, it’s all under control, you can now encourage your friends to meet physically and spend some quality time without any exposure to technology. 


Conclusion

It is important to understand why you need to put control on notifications and technology use. Technology has its blessing; however, too much use of technology can be dangerous. The measures mentioned here will help you reduce your screen time, and put a limit on your digital activities and technology.