What if You Put Your Phone on ‘Do No Disturb’ Mode Forever?

Shutting out digital noise can do more than just declutter our home screens

Image licensed from Shutterstock

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For several years now, I’ve been receiving text message ads from a brand I’ve never even bought anything from.

Actually, most of the text messages I get these days are all ads.

What sets this one apart from the rest, though, is that I can’t seem to stop its persistent pings, which come at least once, sometimes twice, a week. Yes, I’ve tried everything I could think of. I’ve blocked the number. Multiple times. I’ve replied with ‘STOP,’ which usually works with other ads. I’ve even contacted the brand directly, asking them to remove my number from their advertising list. They didn’t reply, of course.

And nothing has changed.

I still get those ads.

But it’s not just this one particularly stubborn digital intruder that’s been driving me mad. It’s the constant stream of other notifications flooding my phone, too. For the past couple of years, I’ve even set my phone on ‘Night’ mode between 9 PM and 8 AM, but that still leaves me with 13 hours of ads, reminders, calendar invites, various app notifications, emails, group chat texts, and more, all trying to grab my attention over and over again. And I do fall for it, far more often than I’d like to admit.

So, for the past week, I decided to try something different: I put my phone on permanent ‘Do Not Disturb’ mode.

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According to estimates by RescueTime, the average person checks their phones 58 times a day, with 70% of those interactions lasting less than two minutes. Add that up over the course of a year, and that’s approximately 21,170 times we reach for our phones — mostly just for a glance. A quick check to see who’s trying to reach us or if something new demands our attention.

Buzz. Buzz. Buzz.

‘Take me in your hands and give me your precious eyeballs, now!’

Oh, it’s just another ad. Or a pop-up notification from that game you downloaded late last night that’s now urging you to spend money to access exclusive magical unicorn levels.

Even if we don’t spend much time on our devices — the global average for phone usage is around 3 hours per day — that’s still a lot of momentary interruptions to our daily lives. Some other estimates even suggest that the average person checks their phone 205 times a day — almost once every five minutes while awake — and that very few of us go longer than 1 hour and 43 minutes during the day without touching our phones.

It’s no secret that the digital economy capitalises on grabbing and holding our attention as frequently and intensely as possible. But even if you’re aware of this, it can still be challenging to resist the pull of the endless digital circus of temptations and obligations and updates. To not grow to expect or crave constant connectivity with it all. The fear of being without a phone has actually become so prevalent it now has a name: nomophobia (‘no mobile phone phobia.’) While psychologists suggest that some people experience ‘phantom vibration syndrome,’ where they feel their phone vibrate even when there are no new notifications.

When I transitioned from a regular office job to fully remote work at the start of the pandemic, I felt an even greater pressure to always be connected than today. I found myself checking my phone incessantly because, well, what if it’s work? What if it’s something urgent? This is still the case for many of my friends, especially those who work remotely. The boundaries between work and personal life — which were never particularly robust to begin with — have become increasingly blurry in recent years. For some, they’ve nearly disappeared altogether. Work and social life and hobbies and advertisements and entertainment all mix and mash in a single device, with no clear start or end for any of them.

It’s no wonder why some people feel uneasy at the thought of disconnecting from that glowing rectangle buzzing with collective noise.

Or why some imagine it vibrating when it isn’t.

A study published last month in Frontiers in Organizational Psychology examined the impact of digital technology on employees across various professions and, unsurprisingly, found it quite detrimental to their well-being. Among the most common issues identified were hyperconnectivity — a constant state of being digitally connected in the workplace; techno-overwhelm — feeling swamped by the sheer volume of messages, apps, and meetings in the digital space; and techno-strain — the stress resulting from overuse of various devices.

As one participant in the study put it, ‘You kind of feel like you have to be there all the time. You have to be a little green light.’

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The internet used to be a specific place. For me, it lived in the big white brick of a computer in my parents’ bedroom, which I could access occasionally, for an hour or so at a time. But now, it’s nearly everywhere, always with us in our pockets, bags or hands. And inside of it — the whole world, it seems.

So, if we’re not plugged into it — where does that leave us?

A couple of days after switching my phone to ‘Do Not Disturb’ mode, I noticed I started to forget it was even there. I forgot I was there — part of the vast, interconnected web that has become so deeply woven into our lives. Without its constant buzzing to demand my attention — it still buzzed sometimes because I’ve allowed a few family members to bypass the setting — I was much less distracted. My screen time was down, too — by around 20% compared to the previous week.

It felt like someone switched off a low-humming noise I hadn’t even realised was constantly running in the background.

This isn’t to say, as some claim, that phones are inherently evil contraptions we’d be better off burying in a hole somewhere and pretending they never existed. They are incredible tools that can make our lives easier. But while they are hardly the root cause of many modern problems — though they do make convenient scapegoats for those unwilling to unpack larger systemic issues — it’s pretty clear that they don’t always help. Just like with any other technology we’ve created, what matters most is how we use it. But who really decides how and, most importantly, when we use our phones? Is it us, or is it the device? Who holds the reins in this relationship?

If we allow every single buzz, every notification and every message to pull us away from what we’re doing and struggle to resist looking at it, even when we know we don’t need to, then it’s not exactly us, is it? And this, naturally, has its consequences.

Research consistently shows that context switching — shifting attention between different tasks, often triggered by our phones — makes us feel rushed, overworked, and more prone to burnout. These constant interruptions also lead to more errors — one study found that even a five-second interruption exponentially increases mistakes — and can make us feel stressed and overwhelmed. Hyperconnectivity, the constant state of being ‘on’, has similar consequences on our mental well-being. But it’s women, in particular, who might be at greater risk of this digital overwhelm. A recent study published in the Community, Work & Family examined gender and digital labour across 29 countries and found that women are nearly twice as likely as men to juggle dual-high digital communication at both work and home — which the researchers dubbed the ‘digital double burden’ — leading to higher rates of burnout and stress.

There’s also evidence that struggling to give proper attention to our surroundings, especially when we’re with other people, and instead giving most of it to our phones — known as ‘phubbing’ — can weaken our relationships. Even the mere presence of a phone during in-person conversations can lower their quality and inhibit trust.

The good news is, though, that even small steps, like turning on ‘Do Not Disturb’ mode, can already be helpful. Experiments in which participants are encouraged to disable their phone notifications for a specific period — like this 2016 study at Carnegie Mellon University — have consistently shown that this practice can reduce distractions, lower stress, increase happiness and help build healthier habits over time.

Still, what happens if, one day, we lose the option to silence all that noise and disconnect ourselves?

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Over the winter holidays, I read Helen Phillips’s latest novel, Hum, which imagines an all-too-plausible vision of the future where phones and other technologies have such a tight grip on people that they can’t function without them at all. They’re always on, always connected, constantly murmuring words to devices that, in children’s case, are physically attached to their bodies.

But these same devices then also bombard users with constant, targeted, and highly predatory advertisements, making it nearly impossible to say ‘no’ to whatever they’re trying to sell. Unless, of course, you pay a hefty price for the privilege of an ad-free existence. As Phillips aptly writes, it’s ‘animals paying machines for tranquillity.’

To an extent, this is already happening, isn’t it?

The internet is already flooded with ads, and an increasing number of apps and platforms now require you to pay to enjoy them without having to suffer through several ads first. Meanwhile, many of us find it harder and harder to ignore the constant buzzing of our phones and resist the addictive cycles of checking and scrolling. Now, just imagine how much more difficult it could become for future generations, especially if we don’t address this issue today.

Reaching for our phones less, scrolling passively through social media less — which is crawling with ads, too, even if we don’t realise it — and generally becoming more conscious of how we use our devices is not only good for our well-being and relationships, but it’s also an act of quiet rebellion. Not necessarily against the technology itself but against how it’s designed by tech corporations and then exploited by other capitalist forces. After all, it’s when we’re distracted and tired and overwhelmed that it’s easiest for those who view us as mere profit-generating consumers and workers to convince us to agree with anything, care about nothing, and do exactly as we’re told.

Practising intentional phone use, setting healthier digital boundaries — especially when it comes to work-life balance — or even opting for a fully notification-free life won’t magically fix the more significant issues contributing to the staggering rates of burnout and mental health struggles. But it can still bring us tangible benefits.

I know I certainly don’t want to always be reachable, always on, and always grabbing my phone when I hear its familiar buzzing.

I want to choose how and when I engage with the digital vortex instead of being at its mercy.

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In 1654, French inventor and philosopher Blaise Pascal wrote:

All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.

The lure of everything happening inside our phones has definitely made this ever-more difficult. But we need to learn how to disconnect from it all. To step back, distance ourselves, and simply… exist. Sit. Breathe. Think. Be with others.

A tool that dictates what we do with our time and energy and has the free rein to poke us throughout the day is no longer a tool. It’s a nuisance.

We should be wise enough to recognise that.

At least while we still can.

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