The constant buzzing and dinging. The screen lighting up a dozen times an hour. A pages-long list of little rounded rectangles, too big to scroll through, filling up our lock screens.
Notifications have outlived their usefulness—at least most of the time. What started as a way for apps and the operating system to let us know about something important, something you want to take action on right now, has been abused by app developers who beg for our eyeballs almost constantly. It’s the attention economy.
So now we’re all stuck in an awful purgatory. We either check our phones
