Don't Let App Notifications Add to Your Election Night Anxiety

It’s Election Day, a day otherwise known as digital Hell. Your poor device will be under constant assault by every newsy app that can send a notification today. Some of you will embrace this, despite the fact that the burning wreckage of trash-filled cars we’re calling the 2020 election is more hyper-politicized than ever. Still, you can avoid being badgered by notifications throughout the day while still staying informed of the key updates you need to know about. Maybe.

Find a sanity buddy and set up a secret app with them

Were I you, I would just put my phone on do-not-disturb mode around 6 p.m. ET—when the polls begin closing—but really, probably about an hour or two beforehand. Or maybe just the whole day. It’s advice my colleague Beth already covered, and she hit the nail on the head:

At the very least, you need to turn off your notifications. If you disregard all my advice, the absolute bare minimum, must do is to set your phone to Do Not Disturb at whatever ungodly hour you finally turn in.

I will go one step more and say that you should tap someone more tuned-in to be your your personal filter for the evening. Whitelist them on your phone if they call or text; or, better yet, agree to use one messaging app—perhaps something you rarely use—to stay in touch. That way, when you peek at your phone (yes, you’ll peek), you can simply look to see if you have any new messages from that one person on that one specific app. That’s where you’ll get your major news. And instruct them specifically about what kind of “major election night news” is worth sharing with you.

You’re basically setting up an “accountabilibuddy,” a special someone will be your eyes and ears so you aren’t overwhelmed with 80 notifications every time a website, news channel, pundit, or political enthusiast makes a meaningless prediction today.

Trim, but don’t turn off, your notifications

If you don’t want to fully disconnect from the outside world, I strongly recommend going through your settings and building a firewall so ypu aren’t bothered by everything at once. Here’s how that works:

On iOS, consider setting up Screen Time’s “Downtime” feature to run the entire day—or at least during the prime-time hours of election madness. Then, use “App Limits” to block the entire “Information & Reading” category (and possibly “Social,” too). This will ensure you can’t access any of your news apps by default, and none of their notifications will pop up on your device.

From there, pick one news app you care about and add it to your “Always Allowed” list so you’ll be able to access it and receive its notifications. (We recommend The Guardian’s app, but you’re free to pick whatever you prefer.)

On Android, pull up your device’s “Digital Wellbeing” options in Settings and use the “Focus mode” option to block notifications from “distracting” apps—every news app but the one that will get you through election night.

I’m also a big fan of Android’s “Flip to Shhh” feature, if it’s present on your device. Leave your phone as it is during election night; if you’re finding it a bit much at any given moment, just set your phone on a surface screen-side down to automatically enable its Do Not Disturb mode. Once you’re ready to jump back in, flip it over again.

Pick the right election night experience for you

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It stands to reason that nearly every app related to delivering the news will have some kind of election night coverage—and that’s just the news. There’s plenty of other related programming to watch, from the Showtime show from our great savior, Stephen Colbert, to a live feed of The Daily Show With Trevor Noah.

I don’t have a solid preference for one news app or service over the other, save for more obviously neutral entities (like C-SPAN). But even C-SPAN only has a radio app, and listening to everyone opine on election results for hours is probably going to be more maddening than phone notifications.

If you’re on iOS, you can simply tune into the Apple News app for by-the-minute updates to voting counts. There are also apps like Brief or NBC News, which you can use to drop a widget of election results on your various Home Screen pages if you want a quick peek without a news overload. As always, if any of these apps get too spammy with their notifications, silence them—or, at least, prevent them from dropping onto your lock screen. Be your own controller for when and how you want to ingest the latest election updates.

On Android, you’ll get a similar real-time counting experience by searching for “Election results” on your Google app. And if you want a widget that pulls in results from, say, FiveThirtyEight, that’s easy enough to install.

There are plenty of other apps you can rely on for election updates, but it’s hard to say which ones will go into overdrive with their notifications. It’s going to be a crazy night, so I’d stick with my earlier techniques if you want to try to get control of your notifications.

Of course, you could just stick to your web browser and a more subdued, no-talking-heads experience like 270towin’s live results map. With luck, today will be a one-night affair; in all likelihood, the 2020 election is going to drag out for days or weeks, so perhaps parking yourself in front of the computer isn’t really necessary this time around.

How to Help With the Election Today If You've Already Voted Read More

Maybe don’t take the most serious election of this generation so seriously

I don’t mean to be glib. The stakes for today are huge. But if you’ve already voted (or are planning to do so today), that’s all you can do—unless you want to participate in some last minute phone-banking or drive people to the polls. For most of us, it’s out of our hands after that. Why suffer a night of anxiety for something that, in all likelihood, will not be decided tonight?

Instead, do something else. Delete Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram from your mind, if not your phone. Get away from election night coverage and try enjoying the splendor of 50 states that are, in all likelihood, about to experience a wild few months. At least, that’s what I plan to do, via this livestream from meditation app Calm and the news organization NowThis:

I’m also going to spend some time playing games—World of Warcraft, specifically, though I’ll have to sign out of every in-game chat in order to not get overwhelmed by crazy political trolls.

If I’m feeling like getting some election updates, I might hang out in a Reddit discussion thread, where I’ll enjoy the news with a healthy dose of snark and GIFs. I might sign up for notifications from one Twitter person, instead of any news app whatsoever, so they can dictate the news updates for my terrible (or amazing) evening. Maybe I’ll watch a movie. The possibilities are endless, but none of them include “staring at CNN for hours on end.” I did that back in 2016 and I know better now. Fretting and scenario-diving for hours is not good for your mental wellbeing. Mix your politics with something fun.