Two days before the school year started, I remember looking at my phone with mild frustration. It had buzzed with yet another contact from the school. I had recently finished what felt like a marathon of paperwork, I had stacks of further papers to go through from Open House, and here was another call for my attention.
Part of this was the doubling since all the messages sent to the school’s parent contact app are also forwarded to my email. So it seemed like I’d had half a dozen contacts that day instead of only three. And none of them really called for urgent action—they were reiterations of information we already had and welcomes.
Yet it turns out I’m not alone in this. In fact, being overwhelmed with too many school emails is causing parents to miss the important ones.
Social Fatigue Is Running Rampant
Many of us have been overwhelmed with contact and social interaction since the pandemic. This seems to have been happening before the pandemic, though.
As a society, we’ve collectively stopped answering our phones. BankMyCell reported survey results earlier this year focused on millennials, for instance, showing that most of us won’t answer phones and avoid making phone calls ourselves. A YouSwitch study found similar results with Gen Z and that overall, the average person spends only about 5 minutes on the phone per day now—compare that to when we dragged the corded phone around halls to our room for long private chats!
Maybe it’s because social media and texting mean we’re in constant contact with not only our nearest and dearest but everyone, or because so many of our communications are notifications. Regardless, humans seem to be pulling away from constant contact.
No News Is Good News
These same surveys show that we fear a call means bad news. We’ve all just lived through a pandemic, with many of us anxious about loved ones in hospitals, nursing homes, and other facilities. Our kids have been in schools while we worried about another outbreak. Our jobs have been at risk, and we wondered what else might shut down.
When it comes to schools, there are other fears. We’ve watched one school shooting after another appear on the news, and on a smaller scale, we stay on alert for any news of our kids being in trouble or being hurt or of any number of other possible incidents while they’re out of our sight.
School Contact Sets Off Internal Alarm Bells
Whatever exactly we fear, when we get those school messages, adrenaline gets running. A new survey shows that this reaction is widespread.
The survey, which comes from Yahoo, shows that the average parent already has thousands of unread emails in their inbox, with larger numbers for younger parents, and it’s stressing us out. A third of respondents said their personal email is more stressful than their work email!
With school back in session, parents are receiving an average of four new emails per day about school-related matters and extracurricular activities, which adds up to more than 80 new emails from the school system per month.
Too Much Is Never Enough
When the messages pile up, especially those that aren’t urgent or don’t need a reply, we tend to glance and ignore them. After all, if I’ve already received five emails about school buses, with the first explaining that they don’t have seats for my kids thanks to a driver shortage. The next four are about behavior on the bus and bus schedules/substitutions (none of which is relevant to me since there aren’t seats for my kids), then I may very well overlook the sixth email, which announces the date that the system expects to have more seats available!
The survey results support that 62% of respondents say they’ve missed important events or details in their email inboxes, and 22% struggle to find a specific email when they want to check a detail.
Parents are also saying this adds to their guilt—they feel terrible when they miss something important for their kids because they lost a detail somewhere in the digital ether.
Parents Are SO Overwhelmed
Right now, we’re all so overwhelmed that the U.S. Surgeon General has released a statement calling for the government at every level, from local to federal, as well as employers, community organizations, schools, and society as a whole, to step up and help us out.
A few parents have been speaking out for a while regarding school emails and schedules. Last year, one mom wrote in an op-ed for The Guardian:
“I love my children’s school, and the time its teachers take to keep parents in the loop. I’m not against reminders, or newsletters, or updates, or FYIs. I’d certainly prefer too much communication than too little. I’m just not, well, keeping up with all of it right now. And once it occurred to me that maybe, right now I can’t, it made sense to take a breath, explain, and ask for help.”
The author, Emma Wilkins, told her kids they’re officially now responsible for keeping up with what day cupcakes are needed and when their class goes to the library, which is great as long as your kids are old enough, and she absolved herself of the sense of guilt if her kids miss a cupcake or a uniform-free day.
What Are The Solutions?
Wilkins found a solution that worked for her by delegating responsibility. One thing I plan to do is delve into settings and make sure I’m not getting notifications twice for the same message. Yahoo’s survey is driving a new development in their system (which will surely be to a mixed reception), offering AI summaries at the top of email messages.
What else could work?
Parents can immediately transfer important email details to their calendars. Some email programs even integrate with digital calendars. Using your email provider’s function to star or tag important messages to prevent them from being lost may also help.
Perhaps our biggest change should be in how we recognize priorities, remember that not every email has equal impact, and figure out how much attention each one actually deserves.
