---
date: 2017-06-17
modified_at: 2017-06-17
tags: [productivity, social-media]
description: A critique of how notifications turn people into zombies who lose control over their attention, with statistics on smartphone usage and a recommendation to turn off all notifications to reclaim mental freedom.
---
# Notification-zombies

This is a follow-up on [my previous article](/2017/smartphone-attention-pollution) about the love-hate
relationship you have with your smartphone and the internet
attention-deficit-disorder your smartphone causes.

If you're satisfied with the amount of time you spend on your phone, then click 
here https://facebook.com to go back where you came from: Your endless
timeline of distraction.

As Mark Manson is stating in his recent article
https://markmanson.net/attention, our attention will be sold in the future. We
are living in a society that is driven by attention a lot. Think about it. We
get distracted all the time, and most of the time, it's because companies make
money out of it. Aren't you clicking on Facebook when a notification tells you
something happened exactly 5 years ago? Oh hey, your friend sent you a Snapchat.
Let's see! We tend to automatically think we benefit from these types of
notifications, but in fact, it's distracting us.



We live in a society in which distractions drive a lot of our actions, and we
don't learn in school how to go about this consciously because it's so new. Some
people are bigger notification-zombies than others. Some people can't help
themselves and benevolently take action on any notification that hits them.
This, in the end, takes up a big part of our days.

As I stated in my previous article, the internet goes anywhere, anytime. You
don't. A hundred years ago, all distractions were here and now. There was no
digital communication. But with smartphones, distractions are everywhere and
anytime! Because of the internet, your distractions can now be in the future,
past, or far away. This gives a whole lot more options to be distracted about.



We're losing control
The moment you are taking action based on a notification, you stop thinking for
yourself what's important for you, right here, right now. The moment you click
on that SnapChat you got, you forget about your work for a while and that feels
good. The moment you see that a friend liked your Instagram picture, you feel
good for a while, but it totally scatters your attention span. According to 
this
article http://time.com/4147614/smartphone-usage-us-2015/ US citizens are
looking on their phones 46 times per day on average. Assuming that you're awake
16 hours a day, that's once every 21 minutes. And a big amount of the times you
go to your phone it's because you're distracted from what you were actually
doing.

On average users spent 28 minutes a day
http://expandedramblings.com/index.php/whatsapp-statistics/2/ on WhatsApp, and 
50 minutes a day https://techcrunch.com/2016/04/27/facediction/ to go to
Facebook, Instagram and Messenger.

That's horrible.

Most of it is a waste of time.

From 6 hours a day to just 1.
A few months ago, I was on my phone about 6 hours a day, and the biggest part of
that time I was on social media. I wanted to be on my phone less so I tried some
things. After many measures that didn't really work (I went back to about 3
hours a day, but that wasn't good enough), installing Freedom
https://freedom.refersion.com/c/2d1dfd fortunately made me less of a
notification-zombie. Now I'm on my phone just 1 hour a day, and it frees my
mind. I can't believe it.

Just try this a while and I bet it will free your mind: Turn off all of your
notifications. You can do this in the settings, but Freedom
https://freedom.refersion.com/c/2d1dfd gives you many more options. After a
while, you will start thinking for yourself again. You'll open Facebook
eventually, when you allow yourself, and when you really think you need it... If
that time ever comes.

Click here to try freedom https://freedom.refersion.com/c/2d1dfd