Groaning under information overload – The Hindu

A significant yet rarely acknowledged downside of social media is the overconsumption of information. We are not an information starved society any more, and in ideal terms, this should have been a great victory for humanity, but social media has somehow managed to spoon-feed opinions. Our ideas, standards, opinions and taste are dictated by reels. Short-form content is ruling our lives, and we are slaves to endless scrolling. Our time holds less value than it has ever held before, and instead of remedying it, we are rather happily sinking ourselves.

For the longest duration, society has struggled with scarcity of knowledge, information and opportunity. Today this anxiety has shifted, replaced by an excess of information, its instantaneousness, and aggressive and infinite availability.

We as a society have become gluttons for content. We have trained ourselves to reach for our phones and scroll in hopes of filling a void, we are stuck in this endless loop where even the slightest form of inconvenience pushes us to chase this dopamine high. More often than not, this content stays with us long after we have already consumed it. Our lives are full of opinions, rants, preaches and commentaries, we are rarely uninformed, yet one has to ask if we are truly informed or just inundated?

This short-form content feels rewarding to watch; one does not have to put in any form of mental labour to reach the point. Our ideas are formed for us, our opinions dictated, we are merely told what to think. This content also governs a huge part of our social life, it decides what is chic and what is cringe, what one should have, to fit in and what makes one odd. We react before we understand. Here the distinction between what nourishes our mind and what merely stimulates it, becomes blurred.

Social media pumps us up with dopamine while failing to add any value in our lives. Much of the digital space revolves around four main spheres: gossip, memes, politics, and influencing. Gossip offers fleeting amusement, memes generally reduce complex issues into instantly digestible fragments, political content instead of cultivating civic understanding rewards outrage, and influencing packages consumption as aspiration. None of this content is inherently harmful, yet when these forms dominate our intellectual intake our mind starts to mirror it making us restless, reactive, and fragmented. It shifts our thoughts and opinions of self; we simply need to have an aesthetic picture-ready house, we have to buy this expensive Korean skincare, we need to try this new drink, and we simply need to post about it and communicate to the world that finally we are a part of the cool club. Yet after all this overconsumption and overexertion, we are left with a void, we fall in this consumption and comparison cycle that rarely keeps up with us — by the time we complete one trend, five others pop up and we are left with the feeling of inadequacy.

Hence in a world that is obsessed with counting calories, count your thoughts and ideas and when you do, remember to hold on to them. So put yourself in an information diet, and be intentional about your content consumption. Just like a balanced diet that includes variety, moderation and quality, your information diet should prioritise depth over immediacy, substance over stimulation.

I started my information diet in the beginning of this year and I can attest that I have been calmer. In addition to being mindful about content consumption, I have also managed to reduce my screen time. Something that has worked for me is always asking myself why I am opening a certain app and just sticking to that one task. In the end, I can vouch for the fact that this diet will not disappoint.

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