Online noise…when too much is too much.
In todays world it seems like everyone knows everything about everybody. And that just feels like a lot of…stuff…for our brains to take in. What your neighbor had for dinner with their spouse during …#datenight. How much your friends, friend of a friend is enjoying their vacation…#blessed. How angry the neighbor down the street is with her husband because he won’t help around the house…#whocares The first time your cousins toddler went potty on the potty….#finally. How much your favorite influencers daughter loves to dress up as Elsa and provides 50 pictures of her as proof….#letiggo
No. Really. Please let it go. Or make it stop. While I am speaking a bit tongue in cheek here, and I think your kids are cute…at some point it becomes too much. Notwithstanding all of the new issues we are now facing with privacy and AI, if we narrow it down to bare bones…we were never meant to have this much input everyday. Our bodies are not built for the constant onslaught of information that we receive through our screens.
For thousands of years, and up until around 20 years ago, our main form of communication was face to face interaction. Which meant that you were limited to the amount of information you received about other people and their lives. And you were limited to local information, not what was happening globally. I would argue that while we seem to want to know everything, having constant access by widening our lenses hasn’t led to fulfillment or enlightenment, rather it has contributed to feelings of angst and anxiety. As humans we have a limit. We seem to have forgotten this. A spillover point if you will. Where even good news just feels like too much news and adds to our every feeling of overwhelm. As anthropologist Dr. Anna Machin states “We are whipping ahead with all this innovation, doing these amazing things, but the biological evolution hasn’t evolved and isn’t adapted to having social relationships online. So there is a massive mismatch.” Our brains and bodies are incredibly, incredibly smart. There are cool fail safes built within our system that give off warning signs when it has had too much. Is it any wonder that collectively as a society we feel more over whelmed and exhausted than ever? Online noise is…noisy. And our voyeuristic desires to constantly peek into the window of everyone else’s home works hand in hand with the available noise. The side effect is the noise drowns out all the cues our bodies are so desperately trying to give us. To rest. To take a break. To get outside. To get sunshine and fresh air. To navigate only your life issues. Because our bodies just simply are not built to hold the weight of the world.
What can we do? Share less. Get online less. Get outside more. Have more face to face interactions. These seem like such a simple and easy fix. And they are. Honoring how we are built may just be the key to quieting all of the noise.