Information overload is an increasingly difficult thing for contemporary individuals in our connected technologically-driven society. We each deal with this bombardment of information differently – how do you stack up?
Jane wants to go to the mall, Billy just liked your latest Instagram post, Barrie is going live on Twitch, and your boss just emailed you yet another schedule change. Four notifications pop up on your phone, begging you to click on their strips of information, do you? The latest news on your favorite TV show, more patch notes for World of Warcraft, or rumors of the next Google phone. So many different avenues of notifications to pop up on your phone or computer at any given time, that it stands to reason that they cannot all be equally effective in their goals at gaining our attention.
We all like to stay up to date on what’s most important to us in our daily lives. Our friends, our hobbies, our choice methods of entertainment. Apps and websites know this too. They continually throw information at us left and right, regardless of whether or not it’s something we actually want to see. Comment on that one post from that former group member you kinda became friends with? Now you’re receiving every other message someone posts on the same thread. Sometimes it’s relevant, sometimes it’s not–quite often, it’s just white noise amongst everything else.
Many people have become adept in sifting through the news they want to hear, or at the very least, grow accustomed to the onslaught of information they receive on a daily basis, enough to figure out what they want from their personal news highway. I know for myself, it’s a constant struggle to dismiss every notification that I can justifiably get rid of. Every little motivational comment from FitBit or news about my favorite band coming to town is pretty much instantly set to automatically be blocked by my phone before I even see them.
Other applications, like Instagram, Snapchat, or Discord, are allowed to (mostly) peek their notifications on to my screen as available. I will usually swipe them away pretty quickly, however, in efforts to keep my screen clear. I never let emails or notifications on Facebook sit too long without being cleared, regardless of how thoroughly I actually read the messages upon initial opening. In the end, it’s more important for me to acknowledge that something wants my attention and file it away than it is to leave it to sit there as a constant reminder that there’s something else I could be doing.
It’s not that I don’t want to address everything that comes up on my screen. I want to stay up to date and in communication with as many of the important things and people in my life as possible, but when it comes down to it, I just don’t have the time. And the not-so-surprising fact is, neither do you. I swipe away notification after notification in hopes that I will have more time to go back and treat each one individually with more depth and care than I could in that moment. Leaving it to sit on my screen for hours (days, weeks or even months as some of my friend’s trigger-worthy mailboxes sit), does not help me accomplish that goal.
I’ve spoken to many people on this subject over past few months since this topic has really started to itch itself in the back of my mind – much like that one annoying Facebook thread that you only half need to keep track of, but seems to be the most bumpin’ thing online this week. My friends and family alike have nearly, without fail, fallen into two groups: the annoyed and the alerted.
The annoyed, like myself, will do whatever they can to keep their screens clear of pop-ups and numbers, putting the brunt of the effort onto their brains to remember who to contact, what to go back to, and more. The alerted individuals, on the other hand, keep everything open until they’ve had a chance to deal with it. Most commonly this has to do with text messages, news alerts, etc. that end up showing up throughout the day. If it hasn’t been dealt with yet, it doesn’t go away. People’s inboxes grow and grow to 800+ unread emails in this category, often without blinking an eye. They still need to be looked at, right?
In the end, both camps probably absorb the same amount of information and have the same amount of response rate to those stimuli, when averaged out over large groups. My point is by no means to make one camp stand above the other, but rather to draw attention to the world in which we live, and the different coping mechanisms we have all incorporated to try and reduce the amount of information overload we receive daily.
We often seek gaming as an escape from the madness of everyday life. The chance to kill something big and reap the benefits, or at the very least, to blow off some steam and chill with friends in an environment that is all our own. It’s easy to forget that these worlds are not devoid of the same information chaos we have in our real lives daily, and to forget the importance of stepping back and reassessing how we manage what information we take in in-game and IRL. Is it more important for you to live in a quieter world where you address things when you have the time, or do you need the reminder staring at you in order to address what’s important?
Where do you stand? Are you annoyed by the notifications you receive daily or are you simply alerted by them?
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