Information Overload: More Is Not Always Better

In today’s world, we’re used to being surround by an overwhelming number of decisions within everything we do. Weather it be going into an ice cream store that has over 100 different flavors to choose from, trying to pick a cute new notebook for class out of entire aisle with all different shapes colors and sizes, or deciding what TV station to watch out of your Cable boxes menu that reaches to the thousands! Although more choices means more variety, I highly disagree that “more is better”, most times leaving places regretting what I’ve chosen, or worse- not being able to chose at all! That phenomenon when you are eating your ice cream cone looking at your friends thinking “I should have gotten what she did” or constantly flipping back and forth between channels because there’s just too many good things on to settle on watching just one .  Within Article #5 of  the Mass Media textbook, Angelika Dimoka did a study testing changes in brain activity when a person takes in larges amounts of information at a time. The study concluded that the area responsible for decision making (Dorsolateral prefrontal cortex) stopped responding after a large amount of information was taken in- causing stupid mistakes and the inability to make accurate decisions. I think of this theory the same way as when you have an overload of things to get done by a certain time, (work or homework deadlines, etc.). Doesn’t it seem like the more that has to be done the less productive you become? Because you just feel so overloaded with things weighing you down that the ability to be productive falls apart. With constant information coming at us every second through technology such as texts messages, emails, and phone calls, the productivity process becomes more difficult than it should.

 

 

 

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