Kelly Bertrand is over her phone’s constant pinging – so much so, she thinks it’s impacting her mental health. What’s the solution?
*Buzz!* Email.
*Buzz!* Instagram comment.
*Buzz!* News alert telling me the world is fucked in some new way today, but it’s fine because the pop-up ad that accompanies the story also informs me Briscoes is having a sale this weekend, so all good, your gal needs towels.
*Buzz!* Doordash telling me there’s happy hour burger deals in my area.
*Buzz!* Text message from my doctor telling me it’s time for a pap smear.
*Screams internally* Me, overwhelmed, hungry and now slightly worried about how many smear reminders I’ve forgotten to reply to.
Lately I’ve been looking at my phone with a mix of apprehension, fear, anxiety and anger because, quite simply, I’m bloody overwhelmed right now.
A more-than full-time job (which I do absolutely love) plus planning a wedding has left me absolutely burnt out from the sheer amount of information that’s being fired at me from all corners right now and, of course, most of that noise is being delivered by my god damned phone.
I work in online media so a big part of my job is to, well, always be online, which is fine. But it’s got to the point where I haven’t even been able to reply to the stuff I actually want to – i.e my friends – and need to – i.e work stuff – because if I look at one notification, I’ll be forced to look at anything else.
Turns out though, I’m not alone.
The mental load of notifications is too much, says… well, a lot of New Zealand.
In a recent study commissioned by 2Degrees, 50% of Kiwis feel overrun by notifications, with social media, emails and app alerts disrupting focus, invading downtime and fragmenting attention. As a nation, we’re being ruled by our phones and the mental load of always being connected is getting too much.
Thirty-seven per cent of us feel overwhelmed, panicked or anxious about the constant pings and buzzes, and 30% struggle to concentrate due to the number of notifications.
Kathryn Berkett, a leading expert in neuroscience and digital wellbeing, says receiving constant notifications impacts our mental load on a day-to-day basis, especially when it comes to our ability to focus, and what it does to our emotional regulation.
“When we get a notification, it activates a small (or for some, and in some situations, not so small) activation of dopamine and other related neurotransmitters. This then moves our focus to the reward or the pending reward – we release dopamine in anticipation of a reward as well. If we are getting constant ‘pings’ through the day, especially at random intervals, this conditions the brain to expect rewards at that general rate,” she says.
“So our body is maintaining a focus towards the phone, which obviously takes our focus away from being fully present where we currently are – in a conversation with someone real, learning in the classroom, trying to write something.
“Additionally, if we have been getting multiple ‘rewards’ throughout the day for a while, the brain gets used to this frequency. The higher the frequency, the higher the anticipation. So if the frequency reduces, this is a withdrawal of a reward, which we know can make a big impact on our happiness and feeling of contentment. This can lead to us feeling sad, rejected, anxious due to something happening in the brain that we are not even aware of (unless we learn about it).
“The brain is also all about ‘habituation’ which, in the case of dopamine, means we need to receive increasingly higher levels in order to get the same ‘buzz’. In the case of phone notifications, this means we will feel sad, anxious, rejected etc if the frequency of notifications even stays the same over time.”
So that explains the addiction to always wanting to be around our phones (does anyone else mindlessly scroll on Instagram, put your phone down for a few seconds and then almost subconsciously reach for it again with the thought, ‘I haven’t checked Instagram in a while?).
Kathryn says that it’s easy to think that you’re multi-tasking when you’re balancing a cheeky phone scroll with, you know, life, but she challenges that term, and reckons that we’re not actually multi-tasking when we’re switching notifications – we’re task switching, and it’s costing us precious brain energy (I’m sure that’s the official term.)
“Obviously people may interpret these terms differently, it is unlikely anyone fully agrees on any terms like this,” she says. “But I would define multi-tasking as doing multiple tasks at the same time. Task-switching is more as it says, doing one task, then switching to another.
“Multi-tasking is actually impossible to do when we are talking about cognitive tasks. We can do a procedural task (ie, eating, walking, even knitting a familiar pattern) and a conscious task (reading some text, talking about something complex, learning a new fact or task) at the same time. But it is unlikely we can do two tasks that take applied consciousness, at the same time. This means, if we are reading something on our phone and someone comes to talk to us, we need to shut down the part of our brain that is reading on the phone, then switch to talking. This takes energy in the brain to switch focus. Then, when they leave, we have to use energy to switch back to reading on the phone.”
Sure, the energy required to always be connected is tough – but there are other, more dire consequences of excess notifications and screen time, says Sean Lyons, chief online safety officer at Netsafe.
He says, “I am still taken aback by the degree to which we are all “prompted” by technology to stop what we were doing and pay attention. This becomes a significant problem for some, especially when the notifications are just the beginning of further stress and strain. Perhaps it’s the reminders that others are engaging in activity that you wish you were, or it’s a deliberate contact meant to frighten or harass you. In these and other circumstances like it, it’s not just the reminders, the fear of getting them, the dread that comes with knowing that something bad is on the end of that cheery set of tones that can become overwhelming.”
He cotinues, “There are many implications [around safety when it comes to the desensitisation to our phones]. Broadly, if our phone use comes at the detriment of our health and wellbeing, then this should be of significant concern. If our reliance on it excludes other aspects of our lives, such as the support or advice of friends and family, our measure of what is and isn’t socially acceptable or medical advice, then this can have a considerable impact not just on our ability to be able to stay safe online, but offline too. The most frequently discussed example is probably the concept regularly referred to as “keyboard warriors”. The idea that people are prepared to say things or take a stance on issues online that they would not be able to do if they were face-to-face with others. But it doesn’t stop there, online radicalisation after journey down online “rabbit holes”, and even susceptibility to the “act fast” tricks of online scammers can all be seen as a result of a focus of life online without balance.”
Ok so… what can we do about it?
In response to the study they commissioned, 2Degrees have launched the No-tifications, a new initiative to raise awareness of just how your phone is chatting to you. There’s a few things you can do, if you’re like me and you’re trying your best to consciously uncouple a little from your phone, according to both Kathryn and Sean:
- Set up Do Not Disturb mode on your phone for work and sleep
- Split your apps into work and personal, so you can turn off one set depending on what your situation is
- Review your notification settings – do you really need service station alerts, online shopping notifications and news from airlines you flew with once 10 years ago? (Maybe keep the doctor ones on though…)
- Set dedicated times to check your notifications during the day
- Be more mindful around your phone – when it pings, ask yourself, ‘do I really need to check that right this second, or should I finish this task?
- Put your phone physically out of reach when you’re working on something else – use that laziness for good!
I’ll be implementing a few of these things in the coming weeks – perhaps I’ll use that inevitable wait in the doctor’s reception to clean up my notification settings. Better living, everybody!