The brain is like a filing cabinet: The more it takes in, the more it needs to file, store, and assess for importance. When it is not able to deal with information, stress increases in the individual
A new study1 shows(overwhelmingly) that mental health started to break down among young people around the year 2014. This shocked researchers. What was formerly taken to be a given — so much so that the evidence was present in the animal world as well — that happiness and joy follows a u-curve in life, with the youngest and oldest being the happiest, has shifted. For the first time in observable history, young people are experiencing chronic distress at the beginning of their lives. The only thing noted to have changed was the amount of information readily available to young people via smartphones. Always on, always connected, means the brain is always stressed, always processing. While a single copy of a daily newspaper in the 1980’s contained a lifetime worth of information that most individual’s would learn in the 19th century, smartphones have created a neverending informational loop (as did email, texting, social media, etc.)
The solution, of course, is not simply better informational management as is being sold to us in the form of AI, but rather, less information, period.
