The internet is just too much for the human brain. You can see this well in the mobile version of Google’s Chrome browser. If there are more than a hundred tabs open at the same time, the display changes. The number of open tabs is then no longer displayed, but only a laughing smiley face. The user is not sure how this is meant. Does the software laugh at the lack of concentration? Or did an understanding programmer insert the emoji because it just happens so often that we are once again overwhelmed by the flood of information?
There is so much to read, the stress is extensive: an Internet user opens 20 new tabs or tabs every hour on average. People also unlock their smartphones an average of 80 times a day. According to rough estimates, the brain processes more than 34 gigabytes of data during the seven and a half hours a day that the average person spends media consumption.
118 tabs are currently open on the computer on which this text is being written, a distinction no longer possible at first glance. Links to books that you definitely want to read soon. Obscure cover versions, interesting hotels, stupid pieces of opinion. In addition, the usual small and small, plenty of memes and of course the current Corona news, which will quickly become obsolete.
According to a study by researchers at the University of Berkeley, information acts on the brain’s dopamine-producing reward system in the same way that money or food does. “And just as our brain likes empty calories from junk food,” says one of the scientists involved, “it can overestimate information that makes us feel good but may not be useful – what would be called idle curiosity.”
Between infoxication and infobesity
In the age of digitization, we humans are not only omnivores – we also consume information. The only problem is that the internet is so abundant that it is difficult to maintain a balanced diet. The English has a nice word for it: Infoxication, a mixture of information and intoxication – to be intoxicated. Another new but less beautiful term: Infobesity, the obesity of the synapses.
The metaphors are already correct: one’s own incompetence in information management is also noticeable in the performance of the computer. The trackpad only reluctantly transfers the movements of the fingers to the screen, the mouse pointer only reacts to commands in a staggered manner. Like a drunk, or someone who has indulged in gluttony again over the holidays. The laptop’s fan buzzes. Words that are typed only appear on the display with a delay. A gibberish arises. A quick look at the Task Manager reveals that the main memory is 87 percent full. And how does it look in your own head? All that outsourced knowledge – where is it now?
Perhaps it helps to be a little more lenient with your own media use. Perhaps the accumulated collection is much more than a list of fleeting interests. Instead, it is an accumulation of aspirations, the building blocks of the person you think you could be in an ideal world. If you just read all these articles, order all these books, counter all the stupid opinions and visit all these beautiful hotels, then, yes, then you might finally become the person you always wanted to be. In real life, of course, the next distraction is already tempting.
This can drag on for several weeks or even months. 118, 119, 125 tabs – so much knowledge, so much potential. But at some point everything implodes again. RAM busy. Restart necessary. An admission of failure and a liberation at the same time. And then everything starts all over again.