Tweet, picture upload, email, and text! What happened to the simplicity of turning on the television and updating yourself on all the news of the day?
These days are long gone. Our world is full of news, information, and countless ways to find out everything happening. We are on overload! This overload is “news fatigue”. People are not enjoying learning about news, because they are surrounded by it 24/7.
News stations now have Facebook, they tweet updates, send out emails, and text news alerts all while still producing enough content for morning, afternoon, evening and night news. Consumers are overwhelmed. They do not know where to turn to find the best news, because everywhere they turn they are hearing some sort of information. How do you decide what is the most important news and most importantly, how do you decide when enough is enough? If news stations are taking all this time to send out information in every possible avenue, is the content they are spreading the best quality it can be?
Some people thrive on being in the loop. Smart phones allow people to be on all these social networks and more. However, the real question is in how much information are they actually retaining? Our culture thinks multitasking is the best route. In reality, doing more than one thing at a time is less efficient. When a person multitasks, they are dividing their attention between two, three, or many different things and their brain cannot focus on everything at once. This so-called “trait” of multitasking is actually impossible. You are better off doing things one by one and more efficiently.
Even when consumers do take the time to sit down and watch a newscast, it requires a lot of attention. They listen to what the anchor is saying, they are watching video, and sometimes they are even reading updates on the screen. I am talking about this kind of overload. News and information is coming at us in different directions, how can we actually obtain any of it and still enjoy all of it? Is this possible anymore?