(NEXSTAR) – Every single time I text my teenage sister, my iPhone warns me she has notifications silenced, implying she may not see it right away. The weird thing is she typically responds right away or within minutes. Despite her habitual use of her phone’s Do Not Disturb function, she is pretty much always on her phone.
This didn’t immediately make sense to me. I (a millennial, in case that isn’t already obvious by my bewildered tone) have always used Do Not Disturb for times when I’m not on my phone at all (basically, while sleeping or in movie theaters).
But for the younger generation, it seems like it’s more than a switch to silence notifications. It’s a social signal that gives them room to breathe (or hide).
“Muting calls creates a buffer against unwanted communications and potential social pressures,” wrote psychotherapist Duygu Balan in Psychology Today.
Psychotherapist Lauren Larkin told HuffPost it can be about setting boundaries in a time when people feel like they can always be reached. “It helps create a sense of control over relationships that aren’t serving them, either by being less accessible or having less access themselves to what others are doing.”
Do Not Disturb isn’t always about using your phone less, the feature’s biggest fans say. It’s more about controlling how you want to use it and when you want to engage with others. If you’re scrolling social media, that may be a mental break for you, and you wouldn’t want to be repeatedly pinged with new messages in a group chat or breaking news alerts.
If you are trying to focus on something important, those interruptions can also take you out of a flow state, research finds, fragmenting your work and forcing your brain to take time and energy to refocus.
In a personal essay published in Refinery29, Kelly Washington calls Do Not Disturb, or DND, “the best tech feature of all time.”
“With the world and everyone in it in a constant state of overload, we need to take back agency over our time and our lives. Being contactable only when I say so is the perfect amount of nonchalance,” she wrote.
In a similar vein, an impromptu phone call can feel intrusive.
“I really don’t like calling,” my sister recalls having to explain to our grandma with little success. “I would really rather receive a text and respond to it on my own time.” (She sent me a 6-minute voice memo to explain that exchanging voice memos are the new normal for catching up with friends.)
Plus, your friends are typically alerted you have notifications off, so it may reduce their social anxiety if they don’t hear back right away. There’s always the “notify anyway” feature if something is truly urgent.
If you want to take a note from the youth, you too can experiment with enabling Do Not Disturb. iPhone and Android users can find the option in their phone settings.
