Break the Twitch

It’s time to take a step back from the smartphone. Check out these stats from Break the Twitch.

• The average person receives 63.5 notifications per day. [Telefonica, 2014]
• 52% check their phones a few times per hour or more, whether there’s a notification or not. [Gallup, 2015)]
• Meanwhile, 91% of millennials say they have a healthy relationship with tech, but still check their phones 150 times per day. [Qualtrics, 2017]
• It’s not just millennials, though—52% of boomers use their phones during meal times, the highest percentage of any age group. [Nielsen, 2015]
• U.S. users spend over 4 hours per day on mobile devices. [eMarketer, 2016]
• During which, the average user touches, swipes, and taps their phone 2,617 times per day. [Dscout, 2016]
• The average age when kids get their first cell phone is now just 10.3 years old. [Influence Central, 2016]
• 74% of mobile users ages 18 – 34 report an urge to immediately pull out their phone, open an app when bored. [ComScore, 2017]
• The creators of the Facebook “Like” button substantially limit their own social media usage, and the guy that literally wrote the book about designing addictive smartphone apps has his home internet shut off on an automatic timer every evening. [Guardian, 2017]

Reclaiming my digital domain (i.e. email)

I have thousands of unread email… yes, thousands.

As a Gmail user, these messages have been squatting in my account… hiding out in my “Social” and “Promotions” folders. Sure, I invited (sometimes unknowingly) the majority of these tenants into what has become an information catch all, but today I reclaim my digital domain.

Clothing… cruises… StickerYou (WTF?)… Hillary (sorry, Hill… it’s not you… it’s me)… all unsubscribed.

I have spent the last 30 minutes going through dozens of emails. It is just the tip of the iceberg, but it is a start.

UPDATE (8/23/2016): It looks as though my efforts are paying off. My morning email check resulted in no messages in the “Promotions” folder.

BTW… I deleted the “Social” folder from my email, since I decided to stop being so social.

Saying goodbye (for now) to Facebook

Over the past six months, I have limited my time on Facebook, opting to only post pics through my linked Instagram account.

My initial reason for taking a break from the Book of Face was not to limit the sharing, but instead to help eliminate the amount of useless crap, hateful rhetoric and political bullshit postings. Although most of my “friends” don’t know it, the unfollow button has become my new friend, allow me to ignore about 2/3 of the crew.

I often find myself returning to the time-stealing black hole of a site searching for validation on my photos (“yah… Jeffery approves of my sushi platter” or “woo-hoo… Jessica loves that I am at yet another coffee shop”). After doing so today, I felt the need to share a political posting that appeared at the top of my page.

Enough! The fucktard that is Donald Trump does not deserve to occupy my mind… or my Facebook. Plus… all of this banter about the best candidate only divides us, so I have decided to stop the madness… Facebook deactivated.

It seems that Facebook doesn’t want to let me go. Imagine that.

I am sure my clusterfuck of a brain, will have a synapse misfire and I will attempt to log back in. To remind myself of the decision to take a break, I also installed the extension Block Site.

Game on.

UPDATE (8/3/2016): It seems that each site that I have logged in with using Facebook will reactivate my FB account each time I log in. Mark Zuckerberg… you greedy bastard. 😛

Also… I grew tired of the clip-art construction worker scolding me for attempted to log in to Facebook. The BlockSite extension allows you to be redirected to another site. I have chosen Good News Network.