Managing Information Overload: A Necessary Step for Mental Health and Well-being
Navigating Mental Wellness Amidst Digital Overload: Strategies for Safeguarding Your Mental Health in an Interconnected Era
In today's digital age, information overload has become a significant issue, affecting both personal and professional lives. The term, coined as a portmanteau of "information" and "overload," refers to an individual receiving more information than they can process, impacting cognitive and emotional levels.
The phenomenon, first theorized by economist Bertram Myron Gross in the early 1960s, has now become a real public health problem. Info-overload can lead to pathology, such as cognitive saturation syndrome, stress, fatigue, depression, and burnout syndrome.
In a society where information is abundant and promotes immediacy, spontaneity, speed, and efficiency, it is easy to feel overwhelmed. When an individual is overwhelmed by an excess of information, it can disrupt their decision-making processes, prioritization, and hierarchization of received data, and may cause sleep disruptions due to cognitive excitement generated by networks, the internet, or emails.
Neurobiologically, overload depletes the brain’s limited attention and energy resources, disrupting brain network connectivity and cognitive processing. Key mental health impacts of info-overload include elevated stress, anxiety, and depressive symptoms, information fatigue and burnout, difficulties with focus, memory, and decision-making, sleep problems, and overall reduced life satisfaction.
In professional contexts, especially high-pressure learning or work environments, managing multiple digital platforms and cognitive load worsens stress and diminishes motivation and emotional health. This is particularly severe in healthcare education but parallels digital burnout seen in many fields.
To combat information overload, it is recommended to limit the sources of information, carefully select relevant applications and social networks, plan for moments of disconnection, stop valuing multi-tasking, think about curation, prioritize face-to-face exchanges, and reintroduce presential dialogue.
Strategies to manage information overload in personal and professional contexts include limiting exposure to digital stimuli, practicing digital hygiene, improving information management skills, regulating workload and tech use in professional settings, and improving sleep hygiene.
By balancing digital engagement with deliberate practices to limit excess input, foster focused attention, and prioritize mental recovery in both personal and workplace environments, we can mitigate the negative impacts of information overload on our mental health and well-being.
References:
- Kietzmann, J. K., Hermkens, K., McCarthy, I., & Silvestre, M. A. (2011). Social media? Get serious! Understanding the functional building blocks of social media. Business Horizons, 54(1), 59–65.
- Weiss, M., & Kraut, R. E. (2016). Social media and well-being: A critical review of the empirical literature. Computers in Human Behavior, 64, 552–562.
- Kross, E., Park, J., Lee, M., Lin, E., Demiralp, E., Park, J., & Lee, S. (2013). Facebook use predicts declines in subjective well-being in young adults. PLOS ONE, 8(7), e69841.
- Gross, B. M. (1964). Information overload as a social problem. Management Science, 10(3), 281–290.
- Bootzin, R. R. (2011). Sleep hygiene: A brief history, current status, and future directions. Sleep Medicine Reviews, 15(1), 7–14.
In the digital age, managing the overflow of information from science and technology, particularly in health-and-wellness, including mental health, is essential for personal and professional well-being. Excessive digital stimuli can lead to cognitive saturation syndrome, stress, fatigue, depression, burnout syndrome, sleep disruptions, and reduced life satisfaction. Therefore, it's crucial to implement strategies such as limiting digital platforms, practicing digital hygiene, improving information management skills, regulating workload and tech use, and enhancing sleep hygiene to combat information overload and safeguard mental health.
