Information overload

This article, written by Catriona Campbell was originally published on iabuk.net and is republished here with permission.

According to the noted neuroscientist Baronness Susan Greenfield, the human brain until the age of ten has the capacity to learn at astonishing rates in comparison to later years. No-one really knows how our learning process is slowed after the age of ten, but slow it does. It is almost as though it has programmed itself, and now just needs refining.

However, Baronness Greenfield points to a recent study of digital media in Australia, where children under the age of 16 whose use of digital media, in particular heavy texting, was compared to a control group of non digital using children. The results conclusively prove that the children who text a great deal were quicker to respond to questions during an IQ test than the non-texting children, however they got more answers wrong than the other more considered children.

She highlights the fact that the texting children were more inclined physiologically to respond quickly, as though conditioned by the digital media culture to get information out as quickly as possible, but without fully understanding or considering the impact of the information they were delivering. These desensitised digital-children may behave very differently as adults from the group who are not so digitally savvy.

Greenfield likens our development of digital media and its impact on physiology to that of the tobacco industry, the creation of a product that makes us feel good without the proper research to understand what impact it has on our physiology.

It is true that digital media is being created in isolation of real consumer behavioural psychologists, or even a firm basis of consumer research. So what can we expect?

A favourite example of mine is Twitter – an always on medium with a clear lack of tweets coming from those with a journalism background or with reliable sources. This makes data governance difficult when dealing with half-truths, downright lies and mistakes. Last week for example, the Home Secretary tweeted about a haul of 10m tonnes of illegal cigarettes, which he then retweeted to say should have been 1,000 tonnes. However, few would have questioned his original tweet. What does that say about our information system?

The creation of the world-renowned and reliable BBC, was hailed as the free-world’s greatest independent news achievement, with people tuning in from all over the world to the World Service. However it has become less important to the new generations of digital users.

The overload of poor information is desensitising the masses to the news they receive. There is so much data to take in that our brains cannot assimilate it all, question it, and add our own moral judgement to the information. Hence a deeper emotional intelligence is not being reached, and desensitising occurs.

To create a truly understood statement, campaign or brand, a greater understanding of the new media consumer is required, from the youngest to the oldest. This necessitates an analysis of their cross-channel media consumption, regardless of source, and then a tailoring of that message, depending on assimilation level of the information/data received. If brands can understand this – and act on it – they may well be on the path to success.