Not completely, of course, notifications are necessary for ensuring that your physical life is kept up to date with your digital life. This “status report” is beneficial because our digital lives contribute so much to our social well being. Sadly, though, notifications have become toxic and abused. Those dings, pings, and pops in your pocket command you to submit to your digital life, something that is detrimental to health, and happiness.

What’s wrong? Everything.

Notifications are inherently designed to dictate your attention and lure you into opening an application. This “attention theft” is one of the greatest design failures in modern mobile operating systems. Phone users never consented to stopping their real-world tasks in favor of burying themselves into a digital task — this is something that we have been burdened with.

App developers can, at times, forget about users lives and experiences away from their applications. This is surely explainable as, while building apps, developers view the world through the lens of their application. With such a perspective, any notification is the most important and relevant piece of information that someone needs. Though, information does not always demand attention.

Another pitfall of mobile experience design is that many apps rely on notifications to maintain and increase engagement. After all, how else would a user know that an event has occurred within an app if there weren’t notifications? A truly great app, however, is one in which notifications are meaningless in driving engagement. Users enjoy the benefits of the application so much that they open it on their own volition.

Some notifications are purely unnecessary to a user. These are the “come back” notifications! They provide little to no value to the user but simply invite the user to come to the app. While these are largely ignored, apps still get some users to fall into the trap of opening the app and stopping their real-world task.

Facebook has been increasing their usage of these meaningless notifications. The company taps into our evolutionary desire to socialize by sending notifications such as “Sam posted for the first time in a while”. The value that this notification provides to a user does not surpass the value of the time the user is spending attending to the notification. It is purely sent to drive engagement to their applications. I’ve never asked to receive notifications when someone posted, yet I still do. The assumption that the notification is relevant is, again, a great UX design failure. The greatest failure, however, is that the function of notifications is no longer to notify a user, but to increase app usage.

Why Is This Unhealthy?

Affective psychologists refer to two forms of the self: the ideal self and the true self. The ideal self is the person an individual aspires to be, whereas the true self is the person the individual really is. It is widely accepted by academia that negative emotions arise more frequently when the ideal self differs from the true self. For example, in grade school, a student might feel disappointed in them selves becauase they aren’t performing as well as they ideally would like to be. This is a broad concept, but relevant nonetheless.

Another theory in psychology is the social comparison theory, which states that individuals self-evaluate by comparing themselves to others to appease uncertainty. With the expansive influence of online social networks, social comparison has never been so prevalent. This problem is only exacerbated by a cyclical pattern that occurs on platforms such as Instagram where people post the best versions of themselves to validate their social standings amongst others who are also posting the best versions of themselves. I call this the “ideal world cycle” of social media, where people are only exposed to (and choose to be exposed to) everyone’s ideal selves rather than their true selves.

So what does this have to do with notifications? I theorize that people experience low-arousal negative emotions such as sadness, disappointment, and discomfort on digital devices more frequently than they do in the real-world. This recurrent subjection to these feelings is due to notifications increasing the frequency in which an individual is exposed to the ideal world cycle online (not only through social media, but also through games and other “releases” from the real world). This is the best case scenario. The worst case scenario is when notifications push ideal content, through their messages, right onto your lock screen.

What Can Apple (and Google) Do?

Apple and Google are introducing great mobile wellness features in their newest phones. iOS 12 includes the ability to cap usage on certain applications and, like Android Pie, will allow you to better assess your mobile usage. These are great steps in the right direction for digital well-being, but perhaps effort can be put in more impactful areas.

Also in iOS 12, Apple will introduce expanded notification features that allow for a cleaner notification experience. App notifications will now be grouped on the lock screen, and users have the ability to receive notifications quietly which only allows them to appear in the notification center and removes their banners and sounds. I see this as a pivotal moment where Apple has identified the toxicity of notifications, but more can be done to put more power in users hands.

Phone manufacturers should not display notifications on the lock screen. The lock screen should remain a passive and secure entry point to a device, not retail space to buy your attention. While it is no panacea, perhaps allocating the space for static app extensions (Widgets) where users can quickly take action can be a great balance.

One solution that can ameliorate the issue while still informing the user of a call to action is dynamic notification badges. Being able to convey more information through the little red bubble at the top corner of an app icon could be very useful to developers and shift emphasis away from notifications. Also, with the support of 3D touch, users should be able to see pending notifications specific to the app whose icon they’ve pressed down on.

Apple and Google should include wellness details on the App Store page for apps. For example, how incessant are an app’s notifications and what kind of notifications do they provide. How much time do people spend on the app? Apple should also include different levels of concenting to receiving notifications on iOS, much like they do with location services.

Users should only see their unattended notifications when they ask to. With notifications gone from the lock screen, users have more control over their digital usage as they must make the decision to volunteer to attend to the notification and stop their real-world tasks, rather than the notification demanding their activity.

What Can App Developers Do?

Developers, please be mindful that notifications are distracting, they hurt, they pull people away from their lives. Assume that when you send a notification (at-least with sound), your users will respond to it immediately. Don’t take advantage of that, but instead use it only when their immediate attention is necessary such as when one user is trying to get the attention of another. Think of sound as a design feature, for when a call to action is necessary.

I encourage you to make notifications as meaningful as possible so that the value people get from the notification outweighs the time they are spending attending to the notification.

Only send a notification when they are relevant to the person’s previous actions on your app, not simply to increase engagement. Even then, only push them out when they are truly necessary and there is no other alternative to call attention to your app.

Here’s something new to try: If you truly don’t need the user’s attention immediately, put more emphasis on notification badges rather than notification messages themselves. Users will be more alerted by a visual change on your app icon when they choose to open their phone.

Bottom-line, use notifications selectively and use sound even more sparingly. I promise this will lead to a happier experience for your users.

Now What?

I’m excited for the upcoming changes in iOS 12 and observing how developers and users will respond to them. Currently, one thing I do to pacify notifications is keeping my phone on Do Not Disturb, so I only attend to my device when it is truly necessary.

There should be a stronger conversation around notifications and digital well being. Feel free to let me know what you think on Twitter.

TLDR:

When designing notifications: The value that the notification provides must be greater than the value of a user’s time lost seeing to the notification.

Not designing notifications: Leave your phone on do not disturb more! Be selective about which apps can send you notifications. If apps give you the choice of which messages to receive, deselect all that are irrelevant.

You’ll surely be hearing more from me about this and more.

In the meantime. Mr. Cook, kill the notification.

[Edited 9/11 to include additional suggestions for Apple & Google]