By Mark McNease

One of the things I’ve done to keep from being completely at the mercy of my iPhone is to never have it in the bedroom at night. During the day, maybe, but when dinner is finished and we head into the bedroom to watch Jeapoardy and whatever else we can fit in before sleep takes over, my phone gets left on the kitchen counter. Always.

I’ve also tried not looking at it before 8:00 am, but that hasn’t been successful. Just not having it near me at night has been a great help. I’ve told people that if they text me after 7:00 pm, they won’t get a reply until the next day. You know how many people are texting when they should be asleep or paying attention to their  lives outside a smartphone? Too many.

It’s undeniable that our smartphones are incredible little machines. Handheld computers, and even more expensive than a desktop. They keep us connected to family, news, community, and entertainment. But sometimes it feels like the phone is running us, buzzing, dinging, flashing, and demanding attention all day long. How else are we supposed to doomscroll through the headlines? We want to be alerted if life as we know it has come to a screecing halt.

This week’s we’re looking at how to take back some control. No advanced tech skills are required, and no artificial intelligence will be harmed. Just a few simple tweaks that can make our phone lives calmer, safer, and less demanding.

🔔 Tame the Notifications (This One Matters Most)

If your phone interrupts you constantly, it’s not rude, it’s just badly trained. My personal peeve: the vibrations.  But I keep my phone on mute, so I need to have some to know when I’m getting an important text. The downside is that it shakes against me in the belt holster I’ve always used, and 80 percent of it is spam.

Mark McNease

Why technololgy can feel overwhelming, and how to approach it calmly and confidently.

If technology sometimes makes you feel like you’ve missed a class everyone else showed up for, you’re not alone. For many of us, tech didn’t gently enter our lives—it barged in and changed the rules, often in what seems like a daily basis. This continues to happen regularly to me: AI is everywhere, and now even my bank app wants me to submit to facial recognition. I’m putting that off, but eventually it will just be another requirement of using apps and websites, at least on our phones.

The truth is, most modern technology isn’t difficul, it’s poorly explained. As someone who’s pretty tech savvy, I sometimes lose patience with people who aren’t, but I know better. I’ve put off learning things myself, and I’ve sometimes declared a learning curve too steep for me to climb, at least for now.

Devices assume you already know the basics, apps change without warning, and updates arrive with cheerful messages that tell you nothing useful at all. And they seem to change the entire look and fuction of our phones. No wonder it feels overwhelming.

Here’s the good news: we don’t need to “keep up.” We only need technology that serves our lives, not the other way around. Unless you’re like me and you crave learning new things and playing with every tool in the box, you really don’t have to take master classes in any of  them. At the same time, it’s coming, it’s been coming, and it’s going to keep coming. At some point I just have to sayy “I surrender” and get on the bus.