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For some households, Monday evening is marked by everyone coming together to watch a specific TV show. For my family, the tell-tale sign the week has begun is the endless series of pings as TeamApp notifications arrive in unison to me and my husband, filling our phone screens with alerts and spamming our inbox. <\/p>\n
Like clockwork, at 8pm, just as we are about to sit down and unwind after the first day of the working week, my daughter\u2019s football-netball club sends its hundreds of members a series of 11 photo galleries of the weekend\u2019s matches. That is on top of any other news deemed significant by whomever has been given the significant power to send out notifications.<\/p>\n
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It was apparently vital that the entire school knew about the lost shoe. Fairfax Media<\/p>\n
I admit I enjoy quickly flicking through the mediocre sports action shots taken by amateur photographers \u2013 i.e. parents, including me \u2013 of my daughter and her teammates giving it their all on the court. But do I need to receive 11 separate push notifications, including for photos of under-17 boys I do not know attempting to take a speccy?<\/p>\n
The volume of information is overwhelming. Some say I should turn the push notifications off. But that risks missing something important. More than once I have missed relevant information \u2013 including a school excursion \u2013 because it was lost in the sea of other notifications, which, ironically, defeats the purpose of these apps.<\/p>\n
Related Article For many of us, this excess of information means what would be a relaxing weekend afternoon with a cup of tea instead becomes a dedicated time to sift through the hundreds of accumulated messages from the week.<\/p>\n One parent of a primary aged child said they were alarmed to receive a message titled \u201cUnexplained student absence\u201d regarding the child they had dropped off at the school gates that morning, only to open it to find a generic message reminding parents to explain all absences to the school.<\/p>\n On top of the overload of messages, there\u2019s the sheer number of apps used as official communication, whether for school, extracurricular activities, sports or whatever. For my two kids, I have four school-specific apps, six groups in one app for different sporting groups, plus another three apps for wider sporting associations.<\/p>\n There are apps that allow only one login email, which causes unnecessary friction for parents who are separated. Even when parents are together, the system is flawed, with one parent often becoming the master of information, a role no one really wants.<\/p>\n Non-parenting-related apps are just as bad. Whether it\u2019s banking, shares, emergencies, your favourite department store, productivity, news, even mindfulness apps, they all seem to operate on the belief that the more updates and notifications interrupting you, the better.<\/p>\n \u201cI once received several notifications from my mindfulness app within an hour or so telling me to take a break, to do some deep breathing, etc, while also reminding me to fill out my daily check-in because it is important,\u201d one friend told me.<\/p>\n \u201cThe reminders just compounded my anxiety.\u201d<\/p>\n A co-worker told me: \u201cAt one point, I had so many productivity apps, from calendars to workflow charts, and spent so much time updating them that I never actually got my tasks done.\u201d<\/p>\n Many of these messages are far from urgent \u2013 for example, a recent news update from my daughter\u2019s primary school, on the official Compass app. Supposedly reserved for important updates such as power outages, events, newsletters or early dismissals, this app offered the following news item: \u201cMissing School Shoe.\u201d Along with a detailed and emotive plea for the school community to look out for this normal, run-of-the-mill school shoe, it included a sad photo of the shoe that wasn\u2019t lost, like a photo of a missing child on a milk carton.<\/p>\n Related Article That same week \u2013 thankfully without a photo \u2013 on my eldest daughter\u2019s high school communication platform there was a news item about a found retainer, including its current location, so the owner could collect it.<\/p>\n A few months and hundreds of phone notifications in, I am able to identify every netball or football player who has played at our club this year, whether I know them or not. But the question remains: was the retainer or the missing shoe ever reunited with their former wearers? Is there\u2019s an app for that?<\/p>\n Shona Hendley is a freelance writer.<\/p>\n The Opinion newsletter is a weekly wrap of views that will challenge, champion and inform your own. Sign up here<\/a>.<\/p>\n Save<\/p>\n You have reached your maximum number of saved items.<\/p>\n![\"At](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/5fd9693a63782656922f16d1948a0c43698098a2.jpeg\")
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