Are you having trouble finding interesting things to read? Are you overwhelmed by the amount of books, news articles, and other content available? Are you skimming over titles instead of reading the content? You are not alone. Many people feel overwhelmed by the constant flow of content on our devices, so we’re tuning it out.
The spread of false information is perpetuated by skimming articles and books.
Have you ever played the ” telephone ” game where a minor sentence is whispered into someone’s ear and passed along? This spreading of information continues until the last person repeats it out loud. Rarely does the message come out as intended. The information is always different by the time it reaches the previous person. When individuals skim articles, they often miss crucial details and context, leading to misunderstandings of the original message. As these misinterpretations are shared, they can snowball into exaggerated or false narratives. This process mirrors the “telephone” game.
Humans are not robots; they cannot consume that much information. Will information overload push people to insanity or force them to put down their devices? I can almost envision a future where burning devices will be at the forefront of every protest, a purge of sorts.
While there is no specific diagnosis as of yet, the American Psychological Association (APA) has been researching to understand the effects media overload has on our mental health. Consuming too much news seems to correlate with increased stress and negativity.
On the contrary, reading is relaxing and reduces stress. The distinguishing factor is the consumption rate. Reading an entire novel can take days, weeks, or even years while news seems to be flashing before our eyes.
Artificial Intelligence has doubled the amount of content produced at an alarming rate and will grow exponentially. This rapid pace of media production and consumption makes it nearly impossible to keep up. We do not have enough time to fact-check information before it spreads like a virus. How do we slow it down? Can we? We seem proficient at taking the genie out of the bottle but are not great at putting it back inside.
We must develop AI to identify fake news and misinformation and filter inappropriate content. This will help us maintain the quality of our media and produce meaningful and engaging content.
Information overload is part of why e-readers and digital notebooks will become essential forms of communication in the future and why they will remain popular for quite some time. Digital readers provide distraction-free reading, allowing the reader to focus on what is being read. Information can be downloaded, stored, and read at a later time. This is a stress-free way to consume content; that is what books were meant for.