Student learningfor Grades K–2
Ask Two
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Notifications on Trial
A teen and a parent put their phones' notifications and feeds on trial, auditing which alerts actually serve them and which are engineered to pull them back, then pass sentence together on what earns a place on the screen.
Overview
A lot of screen use is not chosen; it is summoned. Notifications, autoplay, infinite feeds, streaks, and red badges are design choices meant to pull you back and keep you scrolling, and they work on adults as well as teens. This activity teaches students to see those persuasion techniques and then puts them on trial. A teen and a parent each audit their own phone: which notifications and feed features genuinely serve them (a text from a person, a calendar alert) and which are engineered hooks dressed up as helpful. Then, like a jury, they pass sentence on each one, keep, silence, or turn off, and redesign their defaults so the device serves the user instead of the other way around. The tone is balanced and empowering, not anti-technology: notifications and feeds can be genuinely useful, and the skill is telling the difference and taking back the defaults. Because parents fall for the same design, they audit alongside, making it a shared reckoning rather than a lecture.
Objectives
- Students will identify common engagement and persuasion techniques built into notifications and feeds.
- Students will audit their own device's alerts, judging which serve the user and which serve the app.
- Students will decide and justify a verdict (keep, silence, off) for each notification type.
- Students will redesign their notification and feed defaults and compare the effect with a parent's audit.
Materials
On paper
- Handout A: The Persuasion Playbook, a reference (1 per student)
- Handout B: Notification Audit, worksheet (2 per student, one for the teen and one for a parent)
- Handout C: The Verdict and Redesign (1 per student)
- Pens
On screen
- Each person's own phone, to review notification and feed settings during the at-home audit
- Optional: a shared note where a family records what they changed and whether it stuck
Before you start
- Print Handout A for each student, two copies of Handout B per student (teen and parent), and one Handout C each.
- Skim your own phone's notification settings so you can describe where students will look (notifications, screen-time or digital-wellbeing, feed/autoplay settings).
- Set the at-home audit window and the class share day.
- Add your name and the return date to the family note on Handout B.
Step by step
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10–6 min
Hook
Who asked for this?
Ask students to recall the last three times their phone buzzed. For each: "Did a person reach out to you, or did an app reach out for you?" Tally the room. Most alerts turn out to be apps, not people. Pose the trial's central question: "Which of the things on your screen did you actually choose, and which were chosen for you to keep you coming back?"
Facilitator noteThe person-versus-app distinction lands fast and hard. It reframes notifications from neutral helpers to design decisions someone made for a reason.
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26–16 min
Explore
The persuasion playbook
Students read Handout A, which names common techniques in plain terms: variable rewards (the slot-machine pull of maybe-something-good), red badges and counts that nag to be cleared, streaks that punish you for stopping, autoplay and infinite scroll that remove every stopping point, and "someone is active now" nudges. In pairs, students match each technique to an app they use and name what the design wants them to do. Debrief: these are not accidents; they are choices, and the same tricks work on adults.
Facilitator noteKeep it analytical, not preachy. Students respect being shown the mechanism and treated as capable of seeing through it, rather than being told apps are evil.
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316–23 min
Model
Serve the user, or serve the app?
Model the audit on one made-up phone. Walk through a few alerts and ask the key test for each: "Does this serve ME (a person contacting me, a real event, something I asked for) or serve the APP (pulling me back, clearing a badge, keeping a streak)?" Show the three possible verdicts, keep, silence (keep but no buzz or badge), or off, and model choosing one with a reason. Note that a few alerts genuinely serve the user and should stay.
Facilitator noteInsist on the middle verdict, silence. It prevents all-or-nothing thinking and models nuanced control: keep the information, kill the manipulation.
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423–38 min
Apply
The audit (at home)
At home, the teen and a parent each run Handout B on their own phone: list their most frequent notifications and feed features, mark whether each serves the user or the app and which playbook technique it uses, and leave the verdict column for the next step. They open their actual settings together so the audit is real, not from memory. They compare: which hooks caught each of them, and were the adult's really so different?
Facilitator noteThe parent auditing their own phone is essential; it converts a potential lecture into a shared discovery that adults are targeted too. Expect some surprise at the parent's results.
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538–46 min
Create
The verdict and redesign
Still at home, teen and parent pass sentence on Handout C: for each audited item, record keep, silence, or off with a one-line reason, then actually change the settings. They redesign defaults, turn off nonhuman badges, disable autoplay, mute streak nags, keep person-to-person and real-event alerts, and each name one feed habit to change. They note how the phone feels different and set a date to check whether the changes held.
Facilitator notePush them to make the changes during the activity, not later. An audit that never touches the settings is just a worksheet; the learning is in reclaiming the defaults.
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646–50 min
Reflect
Who's in charge now?
Back in class, students share one notification they silenced or killed and what changed. Debrief the balanced takeaway: "Notifications and feeds can serve you, and they're designed to serve the app. Now you can tell which is which and set your phone so you decide when to pick it up, instead of it deciding for you."
Facilitator noteEnd on agency, not abstinence. The win is a device the student controls, not a student who feels guilty for having a phone.
Paper or screen
Unplugged
The learning runs on paper: students can read the playbook, and audit their alerts from memory, listing the notifications they get most and judging each by the serve-me-or-serve-the-app test, then write verdicts without touching a device. The analysis of persuasion design works fully unplugged.
Digital
The audit is strongest with the actual phone: teen and parent open real notification, screen-time, and feed settings, see the true list, and change the defaults on the spot. This is the rare case where devices are the point, because the evidence (and the fix) lives in the settings.
Does it need a screen? Here the digital path clearly earns its place: the manipulation and the remedy both live in the device's settings, so seeing the real alert list and actually turning hooks off produces evidence and change that a paper exercise cannot. The reading and verdicts still work unplugged for any student without a phone.
Evidence of learning
What you should be able to see or collect if it worked.
- Students correctly match persuasion techniques (variable rewards, badges, streaks, autoplay) to real apps.
- Audits distinguish alerts that serve the user from those that serve the app, naming the technique for each.
- Each verdict (keep, silence, off) carries a reason, and the student actually changed at least some defaults.
- Students compare their results with a parent's and can explain that engagement design targets adults too.
Adaptations
- Grade 9
- Focus on three notification types and the single serve-me-or-serve-the-app test, with keep/silence/off verdicts and no feed analysis.
- Higher Ed
- Add an ethics-and-design layer: students evaluate the incentives behind engagement design and propose what humane or regulated defaults might look like.
- Emergent bilinguals
- Provide the playbook with key terms glossed and icons for each technique; the family audit and verdicts can be done in the home language.
- Students without a personal phone
- Audit a shared or family device, or analyze screenshots the teacher provides, and still write reasoned verdicts and an ideal default design.
Standards connections
Students name engagement and persuasion techniques in notifications and feeds, audit their own device with family, and reset defaults, media-literacy analysis of designed environments.
- TEKS
- Social studies skills (sources, frames of reference, bias, and evidence)privacy, safety, and security (c)(10)author's purpose and craftTEKS sections: Technology Applications high school Technology Applications courses (19 TAC Chapter 126); ELAR §110.36–§110.39
- Student Success Tool
- sources, claims, and the economics, science, technology, and society strand
Reflect
- Which of the things on your screen did you choose, and which were chosen for you? (Student ELE 4.1: I take responsibility for my own learning.)
- How do you tell a notification that serves you from one that serves the app? (Media/AI ELE 4.1: critical thinking about designed information.)
- What changed when you reset your defaults, and what did your parent's audit reveal? (Student ELE 4.3: awareness of strengths and habits.)
What comes next
Families check on the review date whether the new defaults held and adjust them. In class, students carry the persuasion-design lens into analyzing feeds and recommendation systems, and connect the serve-me-or-serve-the-app test to evaluating any designed online environment.
Pairs well with
- The Common Sense Census: Media Use by Tweens and Teens, 2021 (report PDF)Context on how much of teens' media time goes to app-driven engagement.
- News Literacy ProjectMore on recognizing persuasion and design choices in digital spaces.
