Why are we obsessed with consuming information?
We all do it. Sign up for countless newsletters that overrun our inbox. Listen to podcasts on 1.5x or 2x speed. Focus on how many pages until the end of the chapter, rather than the actual story in the book. Our desire to consume, and consume quickly, transcends material objects or food, and manifests itself through our consumption of content, ideas, and information.
It begs the question: why do we have this seemingly unquenchable desire to information gorge, and is it beneficial to us?
**It is important to note that we as humans consume billions of external stimuli that can be classified as “information”. For example, the feelings of wind, spatial awareness, words from a friend, or images on an Instagram feed. This post is primarily investigating the seemingly useful information which we deliberately expose ourselves to, with the goal of learning.**
The premier belief is that it is a survival mechanism. If you think about each need in Maslow’s hierarchy, from physiological to self-actualization, they require exposure to relevant information. Which berry is safe to eat, wow that cliff is steep, did putting my arms in the air and shaking my hips help me attract a mate? As we know, highlighted here by Yuval Noah Harari, one of the great unlocks for humanity and a prerequisite for survival is flexible cooperation and the ability to share information. Psychology Today takes it a step further and argues that if human survival is shaped by cooperation then, by the transitive property, human attention has evolved to place greater importance on information that allows us to coexist with others.
“One can argue that we have evolved to consume more “social” and other types of information than ever before. Communication is key for supporting a complex social system and necessary for human cooperation…” — Harry Haroutioun
We see this everywhere. There are apps for people to share their personal book ratings and recommendations, Reddit threads for specific podcast episodes, and a “share” button at the bottom of every newsletter.
Modern society has taken our survival mechanism and morphed it into an identity. One way we define ourselves is how knowledgeable we perceive ourselves to be on a certain topic(s). To fulfill our vision of ourselves, we must fully commit to, or overextend, our learning. We push ourselves to consume and consume because we need to signal to others our wealth of knowledge.
But to what end…
Another possible reason we information gorge is because it blankets us with a sense of achievement. There are physiological sensations that make accomplishing tasks pleasurable. We live in a quick-win society, where making your bed lays the groundwork for 2:00 pm greatness. Do you opt for books with shorter chapters because of the sense of accomplishment derived from finishing one, scroll through Instagram stories so the red ring disappears, or speed through The Daily just to keep the streak alive?
Our mind and body pit us in a Sisyphusian-like struggle to accomplish.
The right answer to why we do this is probably a combination of both of these factors and many more. In fact, these hypotheses play well together. Our DNA tells us that consuming information is necessary to survive with others… we have an inherent desire to accomplish tasks and be productive, so we consume the information like our DNA told us to… what we “learn” is now our identity. Rinse & Repeat.
Are we doing it right?
It is not in anyone’s best interest to have a short position on learning. And this post wouldn’t recommend it. But maybe we are going about learning and consuming information in the wrong way. The Stoics would say so.
“Nothing is so useful that it can be of any service in the mere passing.” — Seneca
Seneca and Marcus Aurelius deliberately didn’t read as much as humanly possible. They would argue that most of the information we consume is worthless if we don’t spend the time necessary to digest it (maybe just worthless in general but that is a different point). Seneca argued that a better strategy is lingering on a couple of “master thinkers” to consume their works fully.
Beyond learning, it appears information overload is increasing our generalized anxiety as a species. Anxiety is designed to dictate your attention to focus on outcomes that result in survival. But if our new outcomes are continual news stories, podcasts, and articles, in which our rate of consumption can’t equal the rate of output (since we sign up for so many), then a sense of dread sets in. Dread that takes the shape of a little voice in our head who tells us we aren’t being productive and accomplishing our survival checklist.
There is research telling us that for our mind to function at its peak and act creatively, downtime is as much of a need as sleep, physical activity, play, connection, etc. In this case, downtime is defined as “… literally being un-goal-focused. Hanging out, being with one’s surroundings, being spontaneous, having no particular goal or focus”. So social media scrolling right? Wrong. We proved above that our desire to consume is goal driven which requires focused attention. Additionally, newsletters and podcasts are preplanned activities that have agendas attached, typically learning or finishing. Our big misconception is not that we need downtime, but that watching Netflix, scrolling Twitter, or binging a pod serve as downtime. We supplement our “real jobs” with an information gorge… to the detriment of our creative mind.
So what do we do about this? We have workout videos and TikTok now. It is unreasonable to suggest most of us go read Seneca and Plato deeply or stare at the sky and zone out for hours on end. For me personally, the first step is awareness. I am going to take what I have learned writing this article and apply it in small ways, whether that be listening to a podcast at normal speed, unsubscribing from half of my daily newsletters, or stopping a book in the middle of a chapter instead of rushing to the end. The goal being cultivating small habits along the way, turning an information gorge into an information chew-on slowly and digest.
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Would love to know if anyone relates to this topic. I spend too much of my time thinking about the balancing act between trying to learn to better myself and the desire to check boxes. Thanks for reading. — James
