"As a preteen, I couldn't resist the siren song of AIM, or AOL Instant Messenger. I'd hear that "door opening" noise or a message notification and rush to my computer, eager to see if the sign-on was my best friend or my boyfriend, both who were equally tethered to AIM at the time. (Naturally, all of our screen names usually contained the name of the person we were "dating" at the time ― NicksGirl4Eva88 was the height of romance in middle school in 2001.)"
"Now that I'm in my 30s with a full time job, the thrill is categorically gone. If anything, I'm loath to look at my phone: Group texts reach obscene numbers in a matter of minutes, Slack notifications from work stack up and ruin my flow state, and there always seems to be one or two texts from a friend that I've been meaning to get to, but still haven't yet."
"On TikTok, videos tagged "DND" and "DND 24/7" show teens and 20-somethings sharing how peaceful and productive they've felt since changing their notification settings. To render your phone basically useless for the entire day is about as close to zen as I can imagine, but it also sounds weirdly frightening. But the way Gen Z sees it, it's their phone, their time and their prerogative if they need to set boundaries."
A preteen nostalgia for AIM and custom ringtones gave way to adult notification fatigue driven by group texts and work Slack alerts. Constant messages now interrupt focus and provoke anxiety, making phone checks aversive. Some Gen Zers and younger millennials routinely set phones to Do Not Disturb all day to limit interruptions and preserve attention. Social media videos report increased peace and productivity after enabling DND. Making the phone largely unusable during work or study functions as a boundary to protect time and mental space, though the practice can seem extreme to others.
Read at HuffPost
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