Showing posts with label Notifications. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Notifications. Show all posts

Friday, January 1, 2021

2021: Five Easy New Year's Resolutions to (Re)Gain a Healthy Balance with Technology

Free image from Pixbay

2020 was…a lot! I think it’s generally understood by just about everyone that the past year has been a challenging one. So for this year’s first post, it seems fitting to (re)start with five easy New Year’s Resolutions for 2021 to (re)gain a healthy balance with Technology in your life. The first two are new ones for me and the others are continuations of past resolutions:
  1. Spend less time checking the news. The past year’s political elections and pandemic news among other things has provided for plenty of headlines and stories. I realized I was getting mentally burned out from spending too much time scrolling, scanning, refreshing and re-scanning news headlines throughout the day. I’ve tried a break from news in the past on a vacation, but now I want to limit it in my day to day living. One tip to help: Use Apple Screen Time to limit your own time in on Apple News and other apps.

  2. Have a community discussion around the the Social Dilemma, a great documentary produced by the Center for Humane Technology, similar to the LIKE documentary which we have shown in Minnetonka four times. If you haven't seen it yet, make the time to watch it with your family and discuss it, then get others to join in the conversation.

  3. Start a Facebook/Insta/Twitter/TikTok social media fast or at least reduce your daily time on each--I'm now finishing year five on a social media fast, with only a check of Twitter a couple times per week. Do this to gain another 40+ days of time in 2021.

  4. Take control of your phone by keeping off as many notifications as possible--I've done this for six years and counting. 

  5. Have Device Free Dinners as a family and recording daily gratitudes--I'm now in my fourth year and so glad I started this.
I also resolve to resume more regular blog posts. This is post #275. While I’ve been fortunate to remain healthy, dealing with COVID in the education world has been the biggest challenge we’ve faced in my past 26 years working in education. As evidence to this, my previous six+ years of weekly blog posts dropped to only 14 posts in 2020—and only six of those were since March 2020 when in-person school was shut down by our governor. 

Looking for more tech-related resolutions to help you (re)gain a healthy balance?  Watch My 20 Minute Ed Talk: Screen Time & Student Well-being and read related posts:

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Location: Excelsior, MN 55331, USA

Monday, June 3, 2019

Google's Family Link Parental Controls: Improving But Still Limited


Last fall when Apple released Screen Time, Google had a similar service called Family Link but it only worked on Google Pixel phones. Now it is available for a wide variety of Android devices. Parents of children with Android phones and other devices like personal tablets and personal Chromebooks can now set up Family Link to help guide their child's use of technology, monitor time spent in apps, set limits and more. I don't have an Android device so I can't write about my own experience with it. Go directly to Google's site to learn more and obtain directions. I found this article helpful. 

Some things to note: it only seems to work for users under age 13--after that kids can opt out of parental supervision. That may be problematic for some families. It also appears that your child needs a new Google account to set this up- it won't work with  an existing Google account or school/parent's work Google account. It also only allows YouTube Kids, which older users will likely find too limiting. Perhaps kids could still use a web browser to get to YouTube. These limitations make me hesitant to see this as a great solution for many families- it's a good start, but still limited and doesn't provide parents with the full functionality they need compared to Apple's Screen Time.


Recently Google expanded their Digital Wellbeing resource website. It has helpful tips nicely laid out about how to use technology in a healthy and balanced way. They include tips like limiting notifications, setting daily limits for apps and screen time, tips to unplug and more. They added some video interviews of people reflecting upon their use of tech. All of this is a great step in the right direction to help us use our technology. They state on their commitment page: "Great technology should improve life, not distract from it." I hope Google continues to improve their work in this are to make their services even more healthy, give parents more options, and improve the wellbeing of people using their products. 

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Monday, March 11, 2019

Five Tips to Manage Technology For a More Relaxing (Spring Break) Vacation


It's the time of year when many people take a week off for a spring break. Perhaps to a warmer location, a ski trip to the mountains, or just a staycation. Minnetonka students will be on break at the end of the month. Regardless of what you may do, consider disconnecting and possibly going off the grid completely to make your time off even more relaxing. If you have kids, help them to do so as well. Consider the following:
  1. Decrease or fast completely from social media for the week. Rather than spending time monitoring what others are doing on their vacation or posting about what you are doing, just enjoy your own time. If this is too hard for you (or your kids), try smaller amounts of time away from social media- perhaps limit time to a couple check-ins per day. While you're at it, talk about FOMO.

  2. Take a break from--or at least not continually monitor--work email. Most likely less than 20% of the email you receive needs your attention anyway. Personal email can wait, too, if not a week at least not more than a couple glances/week. Consider breaks from texting and Snapchat, too, perhaps using Do Not Disturb to create free times and help your kids experience this, too.

  3. Turn off notifications and interruptions on your phone. Remember that each buzz or beep distracts you from relaxing and being present with those around you. Turn off the badge app icons displaying missed messages and alerts (the red circle with the white number in the top right corner of each app). These are designed to get your attention and cause you to open the app to see what you're missing--FOMO again.

  4. Don't check the news. Lately on vacations I've eliminated my reading of the news and avoided apps/sites with headlines. Rather than being discouraged by what's happening, I've found it freeing to not be in the know. Try it. Encourage kids to do this, too, whether it is news, Twitter, Instagram or Snapchat.

  5. Spend time with friends and family in conversation without technology in use. Set aside time to play games. Show your kids ways to have fun without needing micro entertainment, apps and video games filling their downtime. If you don't normally keep tech away from meal times, a vacation in a new location is a great place to introduce this practice.
Hopefully these tips will help you better enjoy an upcoming vacation or time off. If you can't get completely off the grid, hopefully you can at least decrease the time you spend on it so you can enjoy a vacation more. Of course, you can do all of these at other times, too, such as an evening or a weekend. It's often easier to implement changes in small increments, but getting a vacation away from devices can be a great catalyst for change. Let me know if you try any of these tips or have your own, too.

    Read more about this topic through these related posts: 

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    Monday, February 18, 2019

    Are You Married to Your Phone? More Ideas to Turn Off the Attention Merchants


    A recent video created by Educated Change does a great job of getting us to think about our device use. Watch it above first before reading below:

    (Spoiler alert) As you've seen, the video first gets us thinking we are watching a couple's wedding vows, most likely personally written by one another. Soon, however, we start to question the situation and by the end we realize that the partner in this marriage is actually a device and data plan! Creative videos like this with a surprise do a great job of jarring us into reality to self-reflect on our personal use of technology.

    I’ve written a few times about efforts to get others to realize how much time they are spending on their personal devices (from adding up the hours gained on a social media fast and converting them to vacation time, to Prince EA’s Can We Autocorrect Humanity? to Keeping Tech Away from the Dinner Table and much more.) Getting ourselves and others to look at the amount of time we spend on our phones and other devices is tough. Even harder is getting us to make a change and consider reducing this time. Educated Change offers two hacks which I have not thought of before:
    1. Turn off your device's Raise to Wake setting so you don't feel compelled to look at your screen every time you slightly move your device and it turns on, interrupting your attention and distracting you with any notifications on the screen. Educated Change creatively call this "Turn Off the Attention Merchants." In the past I've written about turning off almost all notifications and taking control of your phone and need to add this to my list.
       
    2. Enact Breaking Bad Mode, their suggested hack which involves turning on Do Not Disturb for most of your contacts. This means that your phone won't buzz or make a noise when new text messages are received. If you've used the Do Not Disturb While Driving Feature, this is similar but is enacted at all times, not just when driving. This is a creative way to use a feature for a new purpose. Educated Change even suggests editing a custom reply to text back, letting people know you are on a "Phone Detox." 
    If you try out either of the hacks above, let me know your success. I'm trying the first but not yet ready to go to "Breaking Bad Mode." 

    I continue to be a big fan of Apple’s Screen Time tools. My family and I use it and I encourage others to do so as well. Using personal data and stats to reflect on one’s own use is the best way to become aware of habits and make changes.

    Read more about this topic through these related posts: 
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