Help! My “Friend” Won’t Stop Interrupting Me
Like most people, I often am annoyed when someone interrupts me while I’m in the middle of a task. Even if I like the person, it’s frustrating to lose my train of thought and spend several moments dealing with the interruption instead of focusing on what I’m trying to accomplish. That’s why I often go to the library or stay in my room when I’m working on a task or just need some alone time.
However, these rules don’t apply to one “friend” — my iPhone 12 Pro. For the last few weeks, I’ve been using Apple’s built-in Screen Time function to track the time I’ve spent on my phone.
As I began looking at the data, one statistic that really interested me was the amount of notifications I get per week. Between Feb. 7 — Feb 13, I received a total of 1,749 notifications. Imagine a friend tapping you on the shoulder 1,749 times per week. That’s how distracting my relationship with my phone has become. As I examined this data, I found that I picked up my phone 1,416 times. I would say that means my iPhone was pretty successful in getting my attention.
I have tried to take a break from this “friend” before. Over winter break, I did an experiment where I turned off my Snapchat notifications for a few weeks. This app sends me around 230 notifications per week based on my data. I found it very refreshing to have them off and to feel like I was the one going to the app when I wanted to use it, not being drawn in by notifications. Plus, it was fun to go on the app and see that new snaps had appeared, instead of seeing them instantly pop-up on my lock screen. However, despite my positive experience, I shortly ended up turning those notifications back on. This is a great example of addicting behavior manipulation that apps use including delayed rewards to pull users in.
As we study media, the concept of stickiness is often discussed. This is essentially a measure of how much a website or app draws users in. Giving the user constant notifications is a great way to encourage them to visit your app. Based on my data, it clearly works at least for me.
It was also eye-opening to see how much time I spend on my phone total. Between Feb 7 — Feb 13, I spent a total of 37 hours and 54 minutes on my phone which is embarrassing to type. 25 of those hours were spent on social media apps which makes sense because Instagram, TikTok and Facebook were my three most used apps, as you can see in the graphic below.
