Menu

↩ Home

↩ Gemlogs

----- Approximate time of reading: 5:39 -----

I'll be talking here about things I can think of about how I control my online life. Of course, it will probably be missing some things. But yeah, I'm mainly centered on my email management because I really like it. I wish you a good read.

How do I control my online life as a digital native (Gen Z) and web developer

What do I call online life

Well, basically, almost everything that is online, apps, web, social media, video games, arts—as long as it is connected to the world (or part of it)—

On the other hand, I don't consider technology's use to be a part of it because it represents too many things to me. I was born in the late 1990s and had my first computer at the age of five. Therefore, I grew up with tech and digital things, and it is basically my life. But "online life" represents to me what is connected online, which may seem obvious.

Also, my "rules" seem a bit too much sometimes, but they are what I needed to avoid becoming 100% time-dependent or addicted. I found it perfect for me, and indeed, it has helped me a lot to keep my brain cells alive since I applied it a couple years ago. I still enjoy surfing a lot. I do not even try to leave the web or my presence on social medias, which I still use a lot. I just needed to control my way of consuming it.

Having control over being controlled

The first thing for me has been to put a real boundary between real life and online life, which means I never or very rarely receive notifications. I always make sure that I choose to open an app or my phone rather than for it to call me. So I always block notifications everywhere.

Also, I have 0 apps on my homescreen on my phone and 0 apps on my desktop on all of my computers. I have no apps in the taskbar or dock; I just let the apps be in their folders and search for them via a search manager to open them, meaning I'm not tempted to open any apps or software if I don't want to.

In the same mood, I have 0 bookmarks on my browsers. I prefer to write down the URL somewhere on my notes, I usually only have 1 or 2 because I need them for a moment. I prefer to type in the URL of the website I want, not because I'm tempted to click on it, but because I despise bookmarks bars.Although it helps, I don't click on anything I can waste my time on. Oh yeah, because... I'm still surfing a lot on social medias, games, Reddit, 9GAG, and many other time-consuming apps. So if I don't keep them somewhere on my browser in a huge bar, I won't click on them.

Mails

Notifs

I receive just a few notifications, the most important ones. All others are silent, thanks to my multiple address management. I still don't open my emails as soon as I see a notification. I can live in peace with a notification on my screen. I just leave them on in case I get an important email or something important happens.

Having hundreds of mail aliases and few main mails

I keep my mail organized. I have one specific email alias for each website or app I use. Then the mails arrive automatically in some "main" mail boxes classified by themes. So I only have two mail boxes with notifications connected to my phone, and they are the most important ones. The others are connected but remain silent.

Of course, I use different solutions to automatically create my aliases, otherwise, it would be a gigantic pain. That is, while I only have access to a few theme mailboxes, such as "shopping," "finance," and "social media," you can create almost any theme you need. I obviously don't create a mail box for each website, but just a specific alias.

Keeping mail boxes empty

Even if I can live in peace without checking my mails, I want to keep the notification, but I don't want thousands of mails a day. So basically, I never subscribe to any newsletter and make sure that if I receive any newsletter, I unsubscribe instantly. I prefer to use RSS or check for news or updates directly.

Social medias

I'm active on several social media platforms... Too much to be honest. Some are very mainstream, others are not, but yeah, I manage them all the same way.

I almost never get notifications anywhere, but I'm constantly checking my most important social media accounts to see if one appears.I'm very active, and to be honest, I think I have to lower my usage... I occasionally enable notifications for various reasons, such as when I follow something interesting and want to stay up-to-date in real time, such as on Twitter.I also have some notifs on on specific groups from specific social media, where I would basically never go back during months without the notifs.

Messaging apps

I don't use that much of those but same, no notifications. People can contact me by GSM if they need me, otherwise, they can wait. I sometimes had notifs on groups but find it useless. I'm the type of person who won't respond or open the app even if there are 9999+ notifications.

Discord is an exception: I use it very much, but I'm in "do not disturb" or "invisible" mode.And I almost check every notification... I still haven't managed to get away from it yet. And I also use it for role-playing games, which take a lot of time, so it's a problem for me.

Gaming

Well, this is a hard part for me—probably the hardest part to apply. I'm a gamer—too much of a gamer. So yeah, I apply some things to control my addiction, but... yeah, not that much to say here.

Except I have no notifications for any games on my phone or computers. Otherwise, I fell down in the abyss for hours. Even if I wait for a huge event or something big to happen in the game, I refuse to allow any notifications on any of my games. It's better for me to miss something than play for 10 hours straight because of a notification.

I stopped playing time-consuming games where you couldn't have a real life aside from them. I'm always on "invisible" or "do not disturb" in online games, so there's no sound if someone messages me.