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Education The Internet

Information Overload No Problem For Most Americans: Survey (reuters.com) 75

Posted by msmash from the information-glut dept.
About 20 percent of American adults feel the burden of information overload, with that figure at least doubling among those from poorer or less educated backgrounds, Pew Research Center said in a new report. Reuters adds: "Generally, Americans appreciate lots of information and access to it," said the report into how U.S. adults cope with information demands. Roughly four in five Americans agree that they are confident about using the internet to keep up with information demands, that a lot of information gives them a feeling of more control over their lives, and that they can easily determine what information is trustworthy. Americans who are 65 or older, have a high school diploma or less and earn less than $30,000 a year are more likely to say they face a glut of information. Eighty-four percent of Americans with online access through three sources -- home broadband, smartphone and tablet computer -- say they like having so much information available. By contrast, 55 percent of those with no online source felt overwhelmed by the amount of possible information.
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Information Overload No Problem For Most Americans: Survey More

Information Overload No Problem For Most Americans: Survey

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  • What is pushed aside? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by QuietLagoon ( 813062 ) on Wednesday December 07, 2016 @04:05PM (#53442239)
    When there is an abundance of information clamoring for attention, something has to give. That something is attention span. As more and more infromation demands our attention, each bit of information receives a smaller amount of our attention

    .
    We've become like hummingbirds, flitting from one information source to the next.

    No longer do we take the time to digest the information we gather.

    • Organization and prioritization become important as is the good ol' trusty "to do" list. The problem, for me, is organizing the disparate pieces of information and molding them into a useful body of knowledge that I can draw from. Evernote doesn't cute it, nor OneNote - these things require manual work. Outlook is a joke. What needs to happen is something that I can plug in email, voicemail, text messages, handwritten notes, etc all into one "brain" that can understand, categorize, and do an initial priorit

    • When there is an abundance of information clamoring for attention, something has to give. That something is attention span. As more and more infromation demands our attention, each bit of information receives a smaller amount of our attention

      . We've become like hummingbirds, flitting from one information source to the next.

      No longer do we take the time to digest the information we gather.

      Oh the masses digest it alright. Those hummingbirds turn into lemmings, perpetuating fake bullshit all day long.

    • Re:What is pushed aside? (Score:4, Funny)

      by Oswald McWeany ( 2428506 ) on Wednesday December 07, 2016 @05:12PM (#53442729)

      When there is an abundance of information clamoring for attention, something has to give. That something is attention span. As more and more infromation demands our attention, each bit of information receives a smaller amount of our attention

      .

      We've become like hummingbirds, flitting from one information source to the next.

      No longer do we take the time to digest the information we gather.

      Too Long. Didn't Read.

    • I agree 100%. Especially people at work who think they need 50 reports in their inbox every morning. There's no way they can look at all of those reports and make an intelligent decision. Every once-and-a while I'll stop sending a report.

      Five months later, "hey I didn't get Report X today, can you resend it ASAP. It is critical that I see that report every day"
      Me: "You haven't received that report in several months. I also think you don't know what "critical" means."

      There's a difference between managin

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Altrag ( 195300 )

        "Critical" in manager speak, from my experience, means "I've got a bugbear today and I sign your paychecks so fix it now." Actual relevance to anything useful seems to be a far less important concept.

        A corollary to that is that most times, if you haven't completed the task by end of day, you may as well not bother since they'll have picked up a new bugbear tomorrow and completely forgotten about today's request.

        • "Critical" in manager speak, from my experience, means "I've got a bugbear today and I sign your paychecks so fix it now." Actual relevance to anything useful seems to be a far less important concept.

          I guess that whole concept of smart business decisions driven by actual data analysis is overrated too.

      • Great! So I have had a subordinate entering all the relevant data into our system to make the right business decisions and you have intentionally withheld critical data? Security, please escort this man from the building.

        • Great! So I have had a subordinate entering all the relevant data into our system to make the right business decisions and you have intentionally withheld critical data? Security, please escort this man from the building.

          An interesting and insightful comment - I have no clue why you were modded down. Sadly, I have no mod points right now..

        • Great! So I have had a subordinate entering all the relevant data into our system to make the right business decisions and you have intentionally withheld critical data? Security, please escort this man from the building.

          I stop sending the report because the data being collected is stale and outdated. It is no longer being collected or entered by the department responsible for it. So I stop wasting company resources running and sending reports that have absolutely no value to the company.

          I'm not just randomly stopping reports from running. I didn't mean to give that impression. There's a reason for it. The fact that management didn't know that the report was missing for months on end is the point of information overloa

      • And this is why I love my job, my boss has told me to stop including certain things in his weekly report because he didn't need to see them every day, if there's an issue he'll ask for a breakdown of a certain part, he doesn't care if they look alright

    • I agree, and I have always hated that aspect of social media. No FB for me. I was on Instagram for a couple of years, but I started to feel like I couldn't keep up. One day I noticed I was like a chicken, always having to peck peck peck at my phone. So I just stopped. Haven't been on IG for a few months now, and quite honestly I know I am not missing anything important.

      If you don't read the news, you are uninformed.
      If you read the news, you are misinformed.

    • When there is an abundance of information clamoring for attention, something has to give. That something is attention span. As more and more infromation demands our attention, each bit of information receives a smaller amount of our attention

      . We've become like hummingbirds, flitting from one information source to the next.

      No longer do we take the time to digest the information we gather.

      Of course the problem comes in when you can't filter out fake news sites such as msnbc. If you just go from source to source, you get screwed.

  • Obligatory xkcd (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 07, 2016 @04:08PM (#53442265)

    http://xkcd.com/1227/

  • Delusional (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward

    ...that a lot of information gives them a feeling of more control over their lives, and that they can easily determine what information is trustworthy.

    The fact that most of them get suckered with fake news proves that wrong. And even then, it's a bitch to even fact check decent news sources these days - they get it wrong, too sometimes.

    And lastly as far as information overload - I feel it. It's just too much and most of it is just noise. The media beats shit to death to the point of ignoring other things. For example, Trump's tweet on the new Air Force One is getting more news exposure than it deserves. I'd like to know more about WTF Congress is up to

    • Fake news isn't a problem for the "other guy" it is a problem for everyone. For everyone succumbs to it, be it in the form of Brian Williams or National Enquirer. Because one is more readily accepted doesn't make it any less fake. In fact, it may be more dangerous. ;)

  • Yup, no problem (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    "...they can easily determine what information is trustworthy."

    Confirmation bias is a wonderful thing isn't it? No need to let anything bother you, just pick the "facts" that confirm your views.

  • Dunning–Kruger effect in action (Score:3)

    by ugen ( 93902 ) on Wednesday December 07, 2016 @04:17PM (#53442335)

    eom

    • Ironically, at least according to the summary, those people with the least access to this information were the ones who felt the most overwhelmed by it.

      Maybe because they can't actually wade through the information to get a handle on it?

      Nevertheless, I still get more solid news in an hour with the physical San Francisco Chronicle newspaper than I do with any number of hours from the internet -double ditto for something like the Economist.

      the hummingbird model of getting information is a very shallow slurp..

    • I was about to say the same thing. "Roughly four in five Americans agree ... that they can easily determine what information is trustworthy." Translation: "Roughly four in five Americans don't realize how bad they are at recognizing trustworthy information."

  • Not surprising at all (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Dutchmaan ( 442553 ) on Wednesday December 07, 2016 @04:24PM (#53442397) Homepage
    It's no problem because Americans are becoming increasingly comfortable with cherry picking their preferred "information" and discarding the rest, and critical thinking is considered "PC" and thus shunned.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by epyT-R ( 613989 )

      It's no problem because Americans are becoming increasingly comfortable with cherry picking their preferred "information" and discarding the rest, and critical thinking is considered "unPC" and thus shunned.

      FTFY

      • It's no problem because Americans are becoming increasingly comfortable with cherry picking their preferred "information" and discarding the rest, and critical thinking is considered "PC" and thus shunned.

        FTFY

        FTFY

  • "that they can easily determine what information is trustworthy"

    Somehow, I doubt the correctness of the determination - a lot of people I know still trust news because insert-big-name-news-corp says so. That is hardly any test of trustworthiness of information.

    I just implemented some code that calculates normal distribution parameters in a streaming fashion - I searched on the internet before implementing anything. A lot of the first few solutions presented by search engines were outright wrong - i.e., the

    • Looking at the source is the most useful way for a normal person to quickly assess the credibility of information. Its quickness is what makes it useful. Most people who don't have the time to personally investigate the broad range of issues that a news organization does. But, they can pick up a paper and get an overview of everything, with reasonable confidence that it's not made-up. This really is the function the press serves in our society.

      Sure, the big-name organizations do occasionally make stories

  • People are bad at telling if they're overloaded. The fact that only 20% self-report as overloaded is pretty unsurprising. But look at the way people choose the news that they prefer. That's an actual example of them being overloaded by (mis?)information and unable to handle it. Way more than 20% of people are unable to synthesize enough information to have a clear view of what's real and what's not.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by sims 2 ( 994794 )

      I know i'm overloaded. I think the media is partly to blame for one thing they are getting better at hiding the shovel full of shit they are trying to feed you.

      Surveys are bullshit anyway.

      Lets go through the top 10 stories on a few sites for giggles without reading anything further than the title.

      News.bing.com

      Thousands Pay Tribute at Pearl Harbor, 75 Years After Attack:
      Kay sounds legit.

      Mitt Romney is now top contender for secretary of state:
      Bullshit speculation irrelevant.

      Some ND Residents Stuck Indoors Aft

  • I doubt it (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Nunya666 ( 4446709 ) on Wednesday December 07, 2016 @04:51PM (#53442587)
    According to TFS, "Roughly four in five Americans agree that ... they can easily determine what information is trustworthy."

    Considering how many Americans only use their computers to access Facebook and email, that "4 out of 5" claim seems unlikely. What seems more likely is that "4 out of 5 Americans have no idea what information is trustworthy because they get said information from social media."

    • Yeah, so what. At least 4 in of 5 Americans agree with the EULAs on the software they use too.
      I think that it's not too hard to get 4 in 5 Americans to agree with anything that makes them feel worse if they choose anything but that option.

  • I don't mind information overload, because I can quickly skim or toss aside anything I don't find valuable. Computers are pretty good at helping me refine a lot of information.

    More troubling is possibility overload, that is the plethora of tools around that let us create amazing websites or apps or images... there are so many choices now that I often get caught in paralysis where I spend so much time trying to decide what tool to use I end up doing nothing.

  • you know the one where X percentage of all statistics are made up. Wasn't it something like 73%...yeah 4 out of 5 Americans my ass.

  • Did this sentence..

    Eighty-four percent of Americans with online access through three sources -- home broadband, smartphone and tablet computer -- say they like having so much information available.

    ..strike anyone else as a weirdly alien concept of what the word "source" means? It's so incomprehensible, that I can't even say for sure that it's wrong!

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • Surround people with tons of information and see how much & what type they remember.

    We are bombarded with so much information that we are all trained to ignore the vast majority of it just to function; I'd be interested in seeing how our brains decide what to ignore.
  • I would think information overload would be less of an issue for the more youthful demographic. I am 40 and have had to get used to more information. My new work from home tech support job requires 4 monitors. Yike, that can be overwhelming for a guy used to doing the same job with one or two. I am just finally, after 5 working days, am getting used to navigating that way of getting work done. I don't really 'LIKE' it yet but it is slowly growing on me. I really dislike the information overload and I have
  • Having a lot of information from the same source will probably entrap the consumer in a cognitive bubble. Diversity of sources is the important point.

  • Whether this survey actually shows what they think it does, is perhaps not clear, but humans and in fact all animals have evolved to deal with information overload; we don't really take in all the sensory stimuli that hit us all the time - we have found ways to cut down on things and focus on what is important. The challenge with the internet lies in finding the right filtering method, so we get the things that are actually important, rather than the things we would like to see. In all honesty, it is probab

  • The overload is primarily due to a collapse of the Signal-To-Noise ratio. It takes a lot of work and will power to filter out the crap and the lies.

    Which reminds me, speaking of noise and lies: please stop calling that shit "Fake News." Fake news is what The Onion publishes. Breitbart publishes blatant lies. There's a difference.

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