Media Literacy is the capability of identifying and critically evaluating the various media that throw facts at us. With this capability comes the encouragement to ask more intelligent and thought- provoking questions. One should be able to analyze all sorts of media and communicate with it or with the help of it beneficially. The more people know about media, the broader their perspective will be. People will know how to deal with certain situations like cyberbullying, racial stereotyping, sexual harassments and how to separate correct information from the hoax. Every piece of article will make more sense as the individuals will have an idea about the author, their respective point of views and the basis of discussion. Media ownership can also be included as a structural part of the study.
The Age of Information has taken a toll on the human brain. Just like any other piece of work needs focus and concentration, information to be processed in a logical method too needs concentration of data. The fact that the industry is overflowing with data, numbers and details is only increasing the load on individual’s mind. The more information shoved down on the public only leads to confusion, panic and irrational decisions because of their inability to grasp on to the truth. Information Overloading or infobesity or infoxication is the result of this continuous pouring in of feed.
Unfathomable amount of information is being pumped onto the web every minute. Around 2.5 quintillion bytes per day. There are so many HD movies available on all the online streaming sites that it would take us around 47 million years to finish watching all of them. At present, there are almost 1.8 billion websites with around 571 new ones cropping up every minute. Large quantity of information is only a secondary problem. The primary concern is the filtering of information, the lack of quality-control and finally, the boards not being able to control the incessant inflow of feed.
There are a handful of reasons why Information overloading is occurring in the first place. Internet, technology and the gifts they bring like the social media is a huge cause for this overloading. People from all over the world make and upload their content on platforms like YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, etc. Besides, now that streaming has become easier due to the advent of Netflix, Amazon Prime, Zee5 and others, the scope of releasing more and more content has become more feasible. Even uploading content is a matter of a few clicks. Technological advancements have ‘blessed’ us with handy devices like the laptop, smartphone and tablets which could be carried around. the user does not have to wait to find a medium or specific time to share their opinion. The web is flung open to them 24×7, 365 days.
When it comes to news or any information of notable importance besides all the news portals are treating the news in different light or focusing on separate aspects of the same piece. Social media too plays a heavy role disseminating news in various forms. Most individuals decide to support or diss a particular party/angle, this gives rise to conflict in opinion ideas getting biased overtime. A genuine reader thus finds herself lost in an ocean of facts and is in a dilemma regarding which one to believe. The oversharing, duplication and transmission of information is also another reason for overloading. This also takes place when there is a dearth in content and news channels, competing with each other try to put forward the same ideas. Among readers there lies the absence of enough tools for them to assess the validity of the news so they go on consuming whatever is fed to them. Therefore, media literacy takes hard hit. In a research, it was found that 68% of the interviewees agreed that social media was the root cause of the problem. Students ranging up to 61% agreed that they get negatively affected by it. Out of them 56% vehemently agreed that it alter their academic undertakings.
Infoxication does more harm than good. Many individuals have complained of a ‘mental fog’, a condition where the brain consumes more than it can process at a time resulting in cognitive overload where the person is irritated and puzzled. As a community, overloading disrupts the dissemination of new knowledge and bars further innovation. Individuals who make up the society are responsible to improve their surroundings. So, an adverse effect on personal psyche will result in the cumulative loss of the society. A lot of time is wasted in cross-verifying known facts or reading similar news articles on different apps. Self-confidence in depleted in the process due to the feeling of ‘never knowing enough’, it gives to anxiety and hinders productive outcome.
There are a few ways in which infobesity can be dealt with. Each one will have to work their ways around it. Having an organized mind always help, one needs to clarify which portions of the news they want to consume, specific searching by using appropriate words, use reliable sources of information and finally focus and analyze only one news at a time.
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