Notifications Are Broken and Technology Companies Should Fix Them

Technology companies should be held responsible for the notifications being sent in their ecosystem

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Bleep. Bloop. Buzz. It feels like notifications are inescapable, constant, and growing in number every day, no matter what we do about them. We’re all spending hours of our day staring into our phones, because they’re designed to pull us in: a dopamine hit released when your phone buzzes is all it takes.

Despite the research suggesting that notifications, and the resulting overuse of smartphones, are causing serious mental health issues globally, little is being done about it. There’s been no meaningful change to notifications in 10 years, and technology companies aren’t being held liable.

“I’d like to interrupt you” sounds far less appealing than “getting notifications.”

Sure, Apple and Google both introduced “digital well-being” tools to help us measure and manage our smartphone overload, but the options largely just offer more information, combined with the bare minimum tooling to manage it. The problem is still chiefly one that falls on overburdened users.

If the technology companies creating smartphones were serious about helping, they’d address one of the key problems head-on and call notifications what they really are: interruptions.

A name with more weight

A notification sounds useful, but an interruption seems unwanted, or at least less welcome. A simple name change would help to make us pause and at least consider the ceaseless flow of information our phones are directing at us.

An example of what an “interruption request” could look like.

It seems trivial, but switching the mental model would make it easier for consumers to understand how a notification erodes their attention span. Each ping saps it away in tiny pieces, with a blast radius that’s far more substantial than the five seconds it takes to look at your screen.