Time Confetti: How Notifications Are Shredding Our Free Time and What to do About it.

This probably sounds familiar. You sit down to watch your favorite show, and before you know it, you’re rewinding because notifications on your phone stole your attention. For me, it was the survival series Alone. I missed a medical evacuation while reading about a hot dog eating contest. I missed a contestant’s run-in with a bear because of a baseball score alert. I even missed a big plot twist thanks to a shipping notification email. My evening wasn’t the uninterrupted time I was expecting.

And it turns out, there’s a name for this constant slicing and dicing of our attention: Time Confetti (Shulte, 2014). Technology is supposed to make life easier, right? Over the last decade, productivity has crept upward, helped along by our phones and other tools. But here’s the catch: while we’re getting more done at work, those same devices are fueling anxiety and crowding out our free time. This is part of something called The Autonomy Paradox.We adopt mobile technology to gain freedom over where and how we work, but it ends up meaning we are constantly available and bombarded with notifications. Layer in the 24-hour news cycle, social media updates, and a never-ending flow of texts, and it’s no wonder we have less uninterrupted time than ever.

Confetti sounds fun except when it’s everywhere. When I first saw the phrase Time Confetti, I pictured using little bits of free time to boost my mental health. Journalist and author Brigid Schulte (2014) coined the term, but instead of a celebration, it describes the tiny, inconsistent, numerous, interruptions from our phone.One or two pieces of confetti aren’t a big deal. But dump a whole bucket of it in your living room, and you’ll be finding stray bits for months. That’s what our brains are dealing when we get so many notifications. The problem is that the “confetti” is buzzing, dinging, and lighting up our screens.

The numbers are worse than you think. How many notifications do you get in an hour? Go ahead, I’ll wait while you count. The average person receives 146 push notifications per day, more the younger you are (Franklin, 2024). Push notifications are those that show up on your phone, typically on your lock screen, whether you are using an app or not. That’s roughly one every ten minutes if we spread them evenly over 24 hours.If each notification takes just 30 seconds of attention, that’s nearly 8% of your day. That’s almost 2 hours spent on notifications alone. And that doesn’t even account for the mental reset time it takes to get back into whatever you were doing, or the emotional toll if those alerts are stressful like bad news headlines or urgent work messages.

Why is all this important when we think about our mental health? The American Psychiatric Association reports that 43% of adults in 2024 felt more anxious than the year before, with technology’s impact on daily life listed as a concern (Boston College, 2020). When our leisure time is chopped into fragments, rest stops feeling restorative.The result? Higher burnout risk, more anxiety, and less capacity to focus on the things that matter. Like actually enjoying that TV show you sat down to watch or connecting with a friend or loved one.  

Time to sweep up those confetti pieces. Here’s how to start reclaiming your time and attention, reducing your anxiety, and improving your mental health.

• Audit your alerts. Track how many notifications you get in a day. The number is often higher than you think, and just knowing is a good first step.

• Cut the noise. Decide which alerts are essential. Switch some apps from “push” (instant) notifications to passive ones you check manually. Your future self will thank you.

• Create phone-free time. Set aside phone-free time in the evenings or weekends. Put your phone in another room. Try it as a family and see what happens when you interact in person.

• Go on a news diet. If the news is stressing you out, take a break or limit your intake. You might try a daily news digest like 1440 or a good-news-only site for a mood boost.

• Protect your focus at work. Block out calendar time for deep work and mute notifications during those hours.

• Get support if needed. If anxiety from constant connectivity feels unmanageable, a therapist can help you develop coping strategies and set healthy boundaries.

The bottom line is that we can’t avoid every ping, buzz, or alert. However, we can control how much of our mental space we let them take up. A little intentionality goes a long way toward turning your day back into something whole instead of a big mess of confetti.

References:

Boston College. (2020, November). COVID-19’s toll on mental health: Anxiety and stress spike during pandemic. BC News – Campus & Community. Retrieved August 10, 2025, from Boston College website: Boston College researchers found that reports of anxiety increased to 50 percent and depression to 44 percent by November 2020—rates six times higher than 2019. https://www.bc.edu/content/bc-web/bcnews/campus-community/faculty/anxiety-and-stress-spike-during-pandemic/

Franklin, N. (2024, May 29). People receive a phone notification every ten minutes on average. Workplace Insight. https://workplaceinsight.net/people-receive-a-phone-notification-every-ten-minutes-on-average/

Schulte, B. (2014). Overwhelmed: Work, love & play when no one has the time. Sarah Crichton Books.