Notifications off: why I can’t stand my phone beeping with alerts all the time

Constant, unwanted and unnecessary – social media notifications are an irritating distraction from the daily grind of adulting

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Why you can trust SCMP

When your phone tells you someone you don't know is doing something you don't care about.

Mark Sharp

Published: 7:32am, 12 Jan 2018Updated: 7:26pm, 3 Jul 2018

I got a smartphone notification from Apple recently, telling me: “You have a new memory”. It was reminding me that I had a photo on my camera roll of my goddaughter, taken several months ago. Thanks, Apple. Totally unnecessary, however. My goddaughter, Gabriella, is a cherub and I will never forget her.

The “reminder”, which lit up my phone screen as I was working, was just one more technological distraction.

It seems Apple is trying to keep abreast of fierce competition in the battle for eyeballs and revenue in the “new economy”. In this instance, it backfired, though. Instead, it redoubled my determination to turn off those annoying smartphone notifications. Don’t people have anything better to do than look at phone screens all day? Yes, of course we do! It’s called “real life”.

Turn them off (under “settings”) because Apple is not the worst offender, not by a long shot. The social media networks are becoming increasingly invasive, ruining our quality of life with this constant nonsense.

Take Twitter, for example. OK, it’s a medium that’s mainly populated by journalists spamming each other and “internet marketing” types who buy thousands of followers using bots, follow you so you will follow them back, then unfollow you.