Parents signed up for classroom updates. They got digital burnout instead.

It started innocently enough. On his daughter’s first day of kindergarten last week, Anthony S.’s phone pinged him with one message from the teacher: an end-of-day recap that was sent to all parents through the classroom’s communication app. But just two days later, he found himself fielding a flurry of messages in the afternoon — “four of which were, like, five seconds apart,” says the finance manager from Long Island, N.Y.

Such is the life of parents with school-aged children today: beholden to apps that keep them connected to every facet of their child’s day. It’s a tangle of disjointed communication, with different platforms for classroom announcements, grades, bus times, lunch menus, sports schedules, doctor’s appointments and more. Anthony, who asked not to share his last name, keeps tabs on four apps, plus Google and Apple calendars, for his daughter — and she’s only 5.

What are meant to be helpful tools and time-savers are turning into just more work for parents to manage. Some families, like Anthony’s, designate one parent in charge of all the apps. Others split the duties. Whatever the arrangement, though, it’s yet another addition to the invisible load of parenting.

“Apps are created to be helpful and increase our productivity, but they can have the opposite effect,” Anna Seewald, a psychologist and host of the Authentic Parenting podcast, tells Yahoo. “You have three prized resources — attention, time and energy — and all of those apps pull from your buckets. It becomes overwhelming to manage. And even if you do keep up, there are negative consequences: You are distracted more. You're not spending quality time with your children.”

Having your child’s world at your fingertips isn’t always a good thing, she adds. Digital burnout — the physical, mental and emotional exhaustion from constantly being on our devices — is “a real issue” that Seewald says she regularly sees in parents.

“Too many apps equals too much information, and too much information is a stressor for humans,” she says. “Parents struggle to prioritize information, which impairs their decision-making and increases cognitive fatigue, because they’re pulled in multiple directions.”

That constant yank from app to app can result in what’s called the switch cost effect: the time and energy lost when moving between two tasks. It can lead to errors and a decline in productivity, and it’s why multitasking can backfire. When you’re switching between to-dos, “you’re not as productive as you think you are,” Seewald says.

The burden doesn’t stop with apps, though. There are text chains, WhatsApp groups, Google calendars and emails to stay on top of as well. Last year, Yahoo and Censuswide’s back-to-school survey of more than 2,000 parents and caregivers with school-aged children found that the average parent receives roughly four emails related to school and extracurriculars each day — that’s 20 emails a week and more than 80 each month. And yet, it’s not a foolproof system: Six out of 10 respondents admitted to missing an important event or detail in their inbox.

The logistical toll of scheduling a child’s day is hard enough. Add in glitchy apps, activation codes, password resets and poor user experiences for extra stress. On top of that, these technologies can also rouse feelings of negative self-worth in parents as they struggle to stay afloat.

“Parents may feel like they are failing when they can't keep up,” Seewald says. “It erodes confidence and fuels guilt.”

Not just parents

It’s not just parents who are drowning in apps. A study from the educational app Edsby found that teachers spend an average of two to four hours per week on these platforms, pulling them away from instructional duties.

Mitchell Lincoln, an educator and father of two from Charlottesville, Va., understands the professional appeal of these apps. Strong family relationships are essential to a school’s success, and the apps are a convenient tool for overwhelmed teachers who want to connect with parents.

“Schools use [the apps] because they are administratively easier,” he says. “They set them up once and never have to look for email addresses, save numbers in the phone and collect permission slips. All that stuff is a pain, and now they can just automate it. For overworked school staff, these things make a difference.”

But as a parent, he gets the annoyance. He’s grateful his daughter’s preschool only uses one app and sends one daily digest. The Edsby survey found that some parents are juggling anywhere from 10 to 15 apps at a time.

“I know I’d be frustrated by more alerts on my phone,” he says.

How to deal

Until there is one app to rule them all, Seewald recommends setting designated times to go through notifications, dividing and conquering with a partner and empowering older kids and teens to manage their own schedules.

That’s what works for Christie Megill, a mom of three and literary agent in Brooklyn, N.Y. Her teen son is “at the age where he’s in charge of managing and understanding the information flow,” she says, “because I don’t have time for their emails and reminders three times a day.”

She also prioritizes connecting with her kids’ teachers IRL whenever possible, like at back-to-school night and sports practices. And she shuts off notifications in favor of email alerts when she has a new message. Otherwise, she says, “it becomes the thing that time is spent on: navigating the experience of an app, instead of getting information or communicating.”

Indeed, all that pinging can create a false sense of urgency that keeps parents in a hypervigilant state, Seewald adds. She recommends modeling app-free time to remind kids that real life happens offline.

“Not everything has to be managed through a screen,” she says.