Notifications vs. Productivity: How to Avoid Losing Focus

The importance and relevance that mobile devices have in our lives as extensions of ourselves, essential tools for work, communication, and entertainment, is undeniable.

However, this constant connection has a not-so-beneficial side: the incessant barrage of notifications.

What began as a system to alert us to important messages or significant events has transformed into a distraction machine that undermines our concentration and severely impacts our daily productivity.

The problem is that, over time, notifications have evolved from a communication tool to a powerful marketing weapon.

App developers have discovered that notifications are an effective way to capture our attention, and they don't hesitate to use them for advertising and sales purposes. We receive alerts from operators, online stores, transportation apps, and social media that, far from being informative, are simply promotional messages intended to draw us back to the app.

This has created an environment where our devices are hijacked. While email has spam filters and we can easily block unwanted senders, notifications lack a similar mechanism.

We're bombarded with ads that we can't easily escape, forcing us to constantly interact with our phones, even when we don't want to—a problem that's already affecting an entire generation.

The real problem arises when we try to stop this avalanche. Disabling notifications completely isn't a practical solution.

If we're waiting for an order, a message from a customer, or an important bank transfer, we can't afford to miss those alerts. We're faced with a dilemma: tolerate the barrage of advertising or risk ignoring crucial information.

Some more advanced users have attempted to manually work around the problem, but with little success.

Apps typically lack granular control, and often mix promotional and functional notifications, forcing the user to choose between receiving everything or nothing.

The lack of an industry standard has exacerbated this situation. Although giants like Google and Apple have issued guidelines for developers, the reality is that these rules are not always enforced.

According to a Common Sense study, young people between the ages of 12 and 18 receive up to 250 alerts and notifications a day , 30 percent of them during school hours and 10 percent at night, which increases the problem in terms of attention during times that are relevant to people.

It has become common for apps to request permission to send notifications without clearly informing the user that they will also contain marketing messages.

This lack of transparency contributes to the problem and makes it difficult for users to make informed decisions.

The solution to this problem does not depend solely on the discipline of the user.

Platforms and developers have a responsibility to create a healthier ecosystem. An ideal solution would be to implement spam filters at the operating system level that, through artificial intelligence, could automatically detect and block irrelevant notifications.

This would allow users to receive only the alerts that truly matter, thus regaining control over their attention, among other options available to address the problem.