Information Overload is “a wealth of information [which] creates a poverty of attention and a need to allocate that attention efficiently among the overabundance of information sources that might consume it”- Herbert Simon, 1971 ^[1]

Even if you have never heard of the term, you or someone you know probably suffers from information overload regularly. It is a phenomenon that has seated tightly with us today, and from all indications, is not disappearing anytime soon.

When Bertram Gross, a Professor of Political Science at Hunter College coined that term in 1964, he certainly wasn’t aware that what he was talking about that year will resonate exponentially in the 21st Century. Now, we have a better grasp of what he was talking about than he himself can ever imagine; we the children in the age of Infovores.

Gross said, “information overload occurs when the amount of input to a system exceeds its processing capacity.” ^[2] He is right. But that is in 1960s parlance. Even our bronze-age ancestors know what Information Overload is. So do we. However, we the people of the 21st century now call it (information overload) a million other names.

Long before the present day, in the age of writing on papyrus and parchment, information overload already existed, mainly among the few that can read and write. Seneca the Elder, the well-known Roman rhetorician and writer, was already complaining that “the abundance of books is distraction” ^[3] as far back as 1AD!

1453 years later and for better or worse, the movable type printing press was invented by the German printer, Johannes Gutenberg. This birthed a new period of information creation and its speedy proliferation. Gutenberg’s machine made printing faster, cheaper and more practical, and subjects that were priorly oral were converted to prints.

This was a revolutionary departure from an age that was used to copying manuscripts by hand. Books proliferated, and they started to be found more outside of European monasteries, libraries and the homes of the elite – they were now also found on the commoners’ shelves.

But these were all medieval wonders.

Coming into the 21st century – over 500 years later – things have changed. In the last four years before year 2019AD alone, we have created more infodata than in the previous 5000 years of human history! ^[4]

Expectedly, complaints like the one of Seneca the Elder will become more common now. And it has been!

How did we generate this amount of information so quickly and who are the people consuming them? And what are the effects of having all this information to consume?

INFORMATION OVERLOAD: WHY IT HAPPENED AND THE PROBLEMS IT BECAME

The problem of information overload didn’t just happen in a day. It has been a problem known since the dawn of record-keeping. It was only accelerated by technology.

The day record started being kept on objects durable than animal skin and clay was the day the acceleration of information overload began. That may sound tongue-in-cheek, but it’s the fact, and the reality of what that single German invention alone (the movable type printing press) brought to the revolution of information creation and dissemination is there for all to see.

This shows how any introduction of new information technology tends to accelerate information overload.

When the internet arrived, a new dawn of information explosion arrived with it. An explosion so great we are all overwhelmed by its magnitude. Mass information that was previously restricted in production to the hands of government, organizations and institutions can now be produced by almost anyone, in any place on earth.

While the rudimentary form of the internet that existed in the early 1980s kickstarted the democratization of information, it was nothing compared to the World Wide Web revolution of the 1990s that even democratize it further, in addition to commercializing its production and consumption.

It was the mini age of the netizen.

Then came the arrival of social media, a phenomenon that started thriving in the early part of the 2000s first decade. Like a large telescope in the hand of a competent astronomer, it brought the problem of information overload to the clear for all to see!

It was social media that amplified the internet culture. It was what initiated a great part of the people of earth to internet use. Information that were obscure before were being posted every second, and altogether, they were becoming far more than what any single person can consume.

The introduction of more portable digital devices didn’t help the problem. Gone are the days when the PC is restricted to the desk. Netizens started blogging even while they are in the toilet, and videos of their celebrations and woes can now be streamed live.

Information glut. Information overload. Infobesity. Overabundance of information; it can be given a dozen names. But those who were naming it were perfectly sure of what they are describing. For they are only describing their frustration.

Their frustration is bitter-sweet, because as they are reveling in information abundance, so are they suffering from the repercussions of its excessive consumption!

Here comes the age of social media addiction and diminishing productivity at the expense of catching up with whatever is the latest that have been posted online.

It was not only our personal space that was affected by our excessive consumption of information content, but our work environment was affected too. In a 2012 survey by McKinsey Global Institute, it was found that the “the average worker spends 28% of the workweek managing email” ^[5]

Email was and still remain a notorious source of the over-abundant information bombarding our lives.

The work environment was only affected by the email plague initially, but it has now been joined by a social media malaise too. Some years back, it would have looked like the height of truancy to leave work for leisurely surfing of social media pages, but most workplaces and social media are so intertwined these days they have become one.

Our social culture was not also spared. The ability to create and transmit information easily (however mundane) transformed the way people communicate.

It also changed the concept of what we considered as relevant information. Almost all social media have created feeds whose automatic updates is tightly connected to our friends activity on the platform, and any other information the social media platform owners think we will like.

If there is a new extension to the general problem of information overload birthed by the internet, it is “social information overload” – birthed by the same internet!

It is the reality of overwhelming information available on social media that has accelerated the creation and promotion of fake news too of recent. When people are presented with more information than they can handle, the sense of discriminating between what is true and what is not true becomes weaker.

Anybody can be the creator, editor and distributor of information on social media; a problem created by an unregulated but ready availability of information. The continuum that starts most often with overabundance of information often end as fake news. (see our article: Fake News: How to Spot it and Spot it).

INFORMATION OVERLOAD: WHAT SCIENCE HAS TO SAY

Rigorous scientific research about information overload are currently young and there isn’t much data on ground.

However, there are enough wailings from offline and online sources about information overload to keep scientists interested in the phenomenon busy on the subject.

Kazi Mostak Gausul Hoq, in his publication featured in Philosophy And Progress, mentioned that it is common for people to experience an “information glut” whenever they try to locate information from print and online sources. ^[6]

Nothing is causing this glut except an increased growth in the creation of new information and the possibility of more extensive archiving of old information now made possible by the digital age.

Georg Simmel (1858–1918) was also an early scientific investigator into information overload. He observed the negative effects of too much information available to city dwellers, hypothesizing that it numbs their ability to react to new stimuli. ^[7]

More recently, Hewlett-Packard was reported to have conducted a study where it was found that the IQ scores “of knowledge workers distracted by e-mail and phone calls fell from their normal level by an average of 10 points.” ^[8]

IN THE CONTEXT OF THE ZEIGARNIK EFFECT

The Zeigarnik effect is a psychological effect observed among people who have to deal with a lot of information in executing their works.

It was first documented by Russian psychologist, Bluma Zeigarnik when she observed that restaurant waiters often have better recollection of the details of unpaid orders, compared to paid ones (which they often forget about once the customer has paid).

The implication of this effect on our receptability to information is grand. For example, it means we will often remember more of the details about information that we find too scanty to satisfy our needs, and less details about the information that we find sufficient to satisfy our needs.

The replicability of the effect have been called into question by other scientists though. However, it seems to provide an answer on why we tend to remember much of narrow incomplete subjects, and why we remember less of wide complete subjects.

In the context of information overload, the Zeigarnik effect may mean that the bulk of information out there becomes practically useless once we are able to make use of the usable ones among it. This is not something bad. The information I find useless will be found useful by someone else.

But, trawling around gargantuan amounts of useless information just to get the minuscule useful to me is not the best idea of information efficiency. And that’s exactly what information overload is causing!

It’s like having people to trawl through an ocean of haystack to find a pin!

Five Ways to Combat Information Overload

1. Focus On What is Important

The bane of information overload is the unneeded distractions – Either the type that distract us from getting things done (e.g notifications) or the type we need to claw through before we can get real things done (e.g spam email).

Distractions can only be conquered by focus. We would meet much information that seems relevant while searching for a particular one, so it is important we focus on getting to the point we are going in the information bulk and firmly ignoring all distractions.

If there is a way to conquer information, it is to cultivate a habit of stubbornness to get where you are going and ignore all distractions flashing at us. It might be hard, but it works.

2. Don’t Multitask

Multitasking while dealing with information is like opening a floodgate of information on yourself; you might get drowned!

We love to think (and even attempt) opening many pages at once while doing research or reading on the internet (while making a continuous pecking cycle around all the pages) makes our work faster, but we are wrong. Research have actually shown that multitasking makes the brain slow down overall.^[9]

Why not direct the brain power to a single page? The information overload facilitated by so many pages only slow down our brain processing power overall and causes inefficiencies.

3. Develop A Strong Will To Ignore

Recognize that only a very few percentage of all information you come across everyday serve any benefit to you. Many of us are tricked (especially online) to give a second look at any advert that mentioned anything connected to us. These are tricks of advertisers, but it seems we readily fall for it too!

This is also a weakness used to manipulate us by social media platforms. They know it is hard for us to resist knowing what other people are saying about us. It is why one of their most successful notification is to tell us “so and so mentioned you.” Only a person that have developed a strong will to ignore information that attracts our base sentiment won’t leave what he/she is doing to check such notifications!

4. Don’t Wait For All the Facts Before Taking Action

Why are you waiting? You want to dig some more details before taking action? You might never get anything done on time!

The amount of information we have on our fingertips currently is antithetic to knowing everything or searching for everything. It might take a lifetime!

Information overload especially affect decision makers, whereby too many detailed information are needed to be pored through before making their decisions. Often, this is not necessary, as their decisions can be safely made with far less information, but the state of technology have left us with a weakness to create information for information sake!

Don’t always wait for all the facts before taking action.

5. Queue Information. Don’t Deal with it as it Arrives

Many of us possess more channel for information reception than creation. The amount of information that reaches our various inboxes on emails, websites accounts and social media every day can be astounding. They are the reason for most of the noise on information overload actually!

If these kind of information is bothering you, why not make a list queuing only what you are interested in checking and damn the rest?! You probably won’t miss anything. The list you create is most likely the most dear information to you. Please, the rest can be damned.

(See our article: To Do List Demystified : A Beginner’s Guide to Creating an Effective To-Do List)

Cheers to a future of relevant information only.

References:

1. Human problem solving: The state

of the theory in 1970. American

Psychologist 26 (2): 145–159. Simon, Herbert A., and Allen Newell. 1971.  https://doi.org/10.1037/h0030806 (Retrieved 24-07-2019).

2. Information Overload: Why it matters and how to combat it – https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/article/information-overload-why-it-matters-and-how-to-combat-it (Retrieved 24-7-2019)

 3. Information Overload’s 2300 Year Old History – https://hbr.org/2011/03/information-overloads-2300-yea.html (Retrieved 24-7-2019) 

 4. How To Prevent Information Overload – https://www.professionalacademy.com/blogs-and-advice/how-to-prevent-information-overload (Retrieved 24-7-2019)

 5. The Social Economy – https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/high-tech/our-insights/the-social-economy (Retrieved 24-7-2019)

 6. Information Overload – https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_overload (Retrieved 24-7-2019)    

 7. Ibid.

 8. Death By Information Overload – https://hbr.org/2009/09/death-by-information-overload (Retrieved 24-7-2019)

9. How to Improve Your Memory – https://m.wikihow.com/Improve-Your-Memory  (Retrieved 9-3-2019)