New analysis has found mobile phone users are being pinged with as many as 50 news alerts daily. Unsurprisingly, many are experiencing “alert fatigue.”
The use of news alerts on phones has grown over the past decade. Weekly use in the U.S. has risen from 6% to 23% since 2014 and from 3% to 18% in the U.K., according to a report published this month by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism.
The New York Times pushes out 10 news alerts per day on average, while BBC News averages 8.3 per day, according to a research tool used to monitor news alerts. Elsewhere, The Jerusalem Post and CNN Indonesia were among the top culprits, typically sending up to 50 alerts each day.
Some news aggregator apps send even more. The use of apps such as Apple News and Google on mobile devices means some users receive multiple alerts about the same story. Overwhelmed by the constant updates, 43% of people who no longer get news alerts say they have actively disabled them as a result of the barrage of notifications.
“It is a tightrope that publishers have been walking,” Nic Newman, the lead author of the report, told The Guardian. “If they send too many, people uninstall the app, which is obviously a disaster. The classic problem is publishers know they shouldn’t send too many individually. But collectively, there are always going to be some bad actors who are spoiling the party.”
Some users have switched off altogether. “I turned off all my news apps and sites after Trump was elected,” one U.S. respondent told the researchers. “I have switched off notifications again because it’s emotionally distressing,” explained another.
Almost 80% of respondents noted that they currently do not receive any news alerts on their phone. Part of it is to do with news avoidance, according to Newman. Keeping up with the news can feel like a full-time job. Juggling work and other responsibilities, most people simply do not have the time or emotional capacity to stay up-to-date with every news story published throughout the day.
“It doesn’t mean to say they’re not interested in news,” Newman told The Guardian. “They just don’t want news all the time, 24 hours a day, coming at you like an express train.” Right now, a bullet train is probably more accurate.
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