Smartphone notifications affecting mood

[Marjo]

Hi guys, I hope your mood is good today! 

According to a UK study that I read about in this article, 32 percent out of over half a million notifications result in negative emotions (hostile, upset, nervous, afraid, ashamed). 

The most negative ones according to the study were notifications that related to non-human activity like phone updates and Wi-Fi availability. Also work-related notifications caused some bad mood.

The positive ones were notifications about messages from friends as it made people feel a sense of belonging. 

In the study there were 50 participants who all received thousands of notifications over 5 weeks. They had to periodically report their moods, and also use a special app that collected details related to their digital alerts.

Do you guys feel that notifications on your mobiles negatively affect your activities during the day or are you happy to receive them? Do you ever modify any app notifications?

[jonsie]

I don't have any negativity towards notifications at all. I get those that I want to get and switch off anything not relevant.

Obviously messages from friends raise the spirits and lighten your mood but that really is to be expected surely? 

[Wa10]

I'm in a few group chats with friends, and notifications from these are geenrally positive.

I also get useful notifications from shopping and media apps about special offers and released which are great for a boost, but tie into the below which is not so good.

Conversely I get notifications from my bank when certain events happen (large payments in and out, balance triggers, credit card payments due etc.) which tend to be more of a negative than a positive, haha! 

My real bugbear is social media related, where I get notifications when friends on Facebook have posted on groups which I am in - sometimes useful, but when somebody is posting the same content in multiple groups then the constant notifications can be annoying.

Never bothered with changing notification preferences, although I really should to prevent the annoying ones (will keep the important ones like banking etc, as even though I'd rather not see them sometimes I do need to)

[Cleoriff]

All of this research is totally dependent on lifestyle...therefore aimed at a certain age group. Also reliant on how you manage everything from a personal perspective.. (Diary, Calendar, Weather, News etc etc etc etc)

I don't set different notification sounds for groups or friends.That would get too difficult to remember who the heck I had assigned which notification to...

I belong to FB and have notifications turned off for that app...otherwise it can get annoying. I just check it periodically.

Otherwise I have two notification sounds

1) The F1 Theme (from Chains) for calls

2) We will Rock you (Queen) for texts.

That's it. All I need.

Busy people who are still working will have their phone set up completely different to me...

[MercedesS]

Only the weather affects my mood 

[Glory1]

I'm with @Cleoriff as also being retired so my notifications would be different to a younger person still in work. I have notifications set up for email, Whatsapp and Google Play Store. All my games' notifications are turned off as they would drive me mad.

I'm also on Facebook but notifcations are turned off. I only have FB to save my games' data. No interest in posting even to friends on FB. I prefer to email, message or Skype if I want to communicate with them. I'm not keen on social media generally as I don't wish my private life public.

I can't say notifications change my mood. My mood will change due to external factors: falling ill, a friend being ill, a death etc.

[Marjo]

@jonsie yes I've been trying to do that too. Similarly to @Glory1 I need to turn off notifications about games as they almost did make me mad! Also, I think the biggest reason actually for turning off notifications was that they were eating my phone battery a lot.

@Cleoriff Good point about the age group, it would have been interesting to see a profile of those 50 participants to understand more. And... how am I not surprised that you have F1 tune for calls!  I have a song clip by Infected Mushroom for all calls, and a Final Fantasy moogle mognet sound for texts.

For @MercedesS:      

[MercedesS]

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@Marjo wrote:

For @MercedesS:      

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 you made my day!