Simply put, humans are not wired to be constantly wired.

– Cal Newport, Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World

When a company or organization is facing a media crisis, a dirty trick that public relations professionals have up their sleeves is to flood the news outlets with all kinds of unrelated information, so that “the bad piece” may get totally lost in all the noises.

This tactic, though devious, often proves effective in diverting public attention and minimizing the impact of the negative news. It’s a calculated move that plays on the human tendency to get overwhelmed by an abundance of information and lose focus on the crucial matter at hand.

This, unfortunately, is not just confined to the corporate world. It seems to have permeated into the very fabric of the internet as we know it today. The online landscape is flooded with an overwhelming amount of data, making it increasingly difficult to sift through the clutter and find truly valuable and reliable information.

The internet, which was supposed to be a source of enlightenment and connection, has turned into a chaotic maze where one has to navigate through a sea of noise to reach the pearls of wisdom. The constant bombardment of ads, clickbait headlines, and shallow entertainment often overshadows the substantive and meaningful content that could truly enhance our knowledge and understanding.

It is the overwhelming chaos of the internet that drove me to limit my access to social media platforms. Instead of relying on the never-ending feed of the digital world, I went back to traditional media.

The internet offers seemingly limitless space for content, but this abundance often leads to a lack of quality control. In contrast, traditional media has finite real estate. What gets published is curated and selected, perhaps resulting in higher quality information. The limited pages of a newspaper or the allocated slots in a magazine force editors to be more discerning about the content they include.

Reading newspapers and magazines gave me a more focused experience. I could take my time, absorb the information at my own pace, and actually think about what I was reading instead of mindlessly skimming through posts.

Maybe it’s time for everyone to start paying attention to the way they get their information. Remember, garbage in, garbage out.