Unpopular opinion: "Scheduled" DND on smartphones is just a fancy nap timer for most people

I was at a coffee shop in Portland last week and watched 4 different people turn off their 9-to-5 DND setting manually by 10:30 AM, so does anyone actually use the scheduling feature as intended or is it just a placebo?

2 comments

2 Comments

xena_miller311mo ago

The real trick is setting it to only allow calls from certain contacts during sleep hours. My mom knows the code to get through if something's actually wrong before 7 AM, but everyone else just gets voicemail. Most people probably never set up the exceptions list, so the feature feels hollow.

paulb981mo ago

Ha, you nailed it. It's part of a bigger thing I see everywhere now. People buy smart home gadgets and set up all these automated routines, then spend the whole day overriding them because they can't be bothered to fine tune the settings. It's like that push button to close the garage door that everyone just leaves the remote in the car for. The scheduling is sold as a set it and forget it solution, but the reality is most folks just want the illusion of control without actually putting in the work to make it useful. So yeah, it's mostly a placebo that makes you feel organized for about a week.