#information overload

#information overload

Think about it. We live in an age where we can access any piece of information within seconds. Every opinion, every drama, every piece of breaking news is right there at our fingertips. And yet, the people who seem most at peace, most focused, and most successful aren't the ones consuming it all. They're the ones deliberately choosing what to ignore.

While others struggle with mental fog and emotional turbulence, these sharp octogenarians breeze through their days with remarkable clarity and calm. I've been fascinated by this phenomenon lately, especially after spending time with my friend's 82-year-old grandmother who still runs her own business and remembers every single birthday in her extended family. Her secret? She started eliminating certain habits well before she hit 70.

You settle in for a quick scroll through your feed, maybe just to unwind for a minute or two. But somewhere between a cooking hack and a clip you've already forgotten, forty minutes vanished. It's all a blur. Welcome to the era of infinite content and finite attention, where our brains are working overtime just to keep up with the deluge.

Reflecting on the dramatic shifts in public opinion, political leanings, and social norms, a friend recently asked how it's possible that so many people seem to have changed their values so quickly. The more unsettling answer is that many haven't changed their values at all; they've changed how much attention they can afford to give. Increasingly, people aren't asking what they believe, but how much they can still carry.

Podcasts have devastated my relationship to music. Confirmation of that sad fact came earlier this month in the form of my Spotify "Wrapped," the streaming service's personalized report of what I listened to this year, including a playlist of my top songs. In the past, this annual playlist supplied a loop of sonic pleasure, propelling me through workouts, dinner preps, and hours-long commutes. This year, I haven't even opened it.

In his short film Papers (1991), the Japanese artist Yoshinao Satoh assembles thousands of newspaper images into a transfixing animation. Moving through a flurry of Japanese characters, moon phases, Go games, house plans and faces that grows ever faster, Satoh creates a mass-media collage that seems to anticipate the age of information overload. Amplifying the frenzied pace and mesmerising effect, he pairs the imagery with a propulsive work by the US composer Steve Reich.

We are being bombarded by information from many sources in our daily lives. Some of it is helpful, some is challenging, and some is anxiety-provoking. The many avenues available to get information may help or harm our efforts to get factual, evidence-based, believable information. Misinformation is just as prevalent as information and sometimes feeds into our desires rather than meeting our needs for reliable facts.

News has never been more accessible but for some, that's exactly the problem. Flooded with information and relentless updates, more and more people around the world are tuning out. The reasons vary: for some it's the sheer volume of news, for others the emotional toll of negative headlines or a distrust of the media itself. In online forums devoted to mindfulness and mental health, people discuss how to step back, from setting limits to cutting the news out entirely.