How can you stop receiving useless social media notifications on your phone?

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Social networks have become more aggressive in sending such messages

You look at Facebook for the first time in a while and you get a rush of dopamine. You have 11 notifications that suggest people are talking about you. You open the application. You used to feel special, now you’re just annoyed.

A new type of notification appears on your phone’s lock screen and home screen, as well as in your social networking apps. It prompts you to view new posts or prompts you to engage with trending topics using phrases like “a friend posts a story,” “a group posts two links,” or “people react” to a popular post.

It’s made to look like a personalized and urgent interaction. “It’s not,” writes Dalvin Brown of the Wall Street Journal.

Social networks take this approach because people post and interact less publicly on social networks. In general, platforms are becoming more assertive. While the number of notifications for each app varies over time, they have increased for nearly every major social network app since July 2023, according to data from app analytics company Measure Protocol.

Instagram saw the sharpest increase, with users receiving 12 more notifications in January compared to the previous July.

Snapchat, X and Facebook also saw growth.

Social media marketers, psychologists and academics say the push from the platforms is likely to lead to greater user interaction. But they argue that these companies are taking a risk through their insistence.

Spokespeople for LinkedIn, Snap and Meta Platforms, the parent company of Instagram and Facebook, also say they focus on a user-centric experience and provide controls so people can turn off unwanted notifications. X did not respond to a request for comment.

From private to public The change in strategy is partly due to the fact that developers are treating notifications and their pages more like a news list, social media experts say.

“Even if you don’t post, there’s always at least one notice waiting to be read,” comments Neil Shaffer, founder of digital marketing consultancy PDCA Social. “Apps gamify notifications to promote algorithmic content,” he says.

The shift in understanding of what is notification-worthy also serves as a spark to revive accounts that might otherwise be dormant. Users who are reluctant to check their accounts may be affected by this type of notification.

“It plants the seed,” says Jay Baer, ​​founder of digital marketing consulting firm Convince and Convert. “Even if you don’t blink at every notification, they’re subtly whispering to you.”

Deleting apps or disabling their targeted notifications would reduce that noise. But if it’s a platform you care about, you can do more to have a more productive experience without being bombarded with notifications.

What can you do?

Companies expect users to keep their default settings instead of knowingly opting out of them. Assuming you want to keep the app on your phone, you can change the notifications so that you only get them when there’s actually an interaction from a friend.