Information Overload Making Teens Sick

Hey bloggers!

I’ve been dwelling on a few of the ideas that were raised in Hugh Mckay’s lecture and the following discussion in yesterday’s tutorial. I was particularly interested by the ideas of information overload, the changing social face of Australia and the influences of materialism, consumerism and the technological age on the youth of this country.

McKay mentioned that as a reaction to change and as life speeds up in modern Australia, there was an increase in the consumption of anti-depressants and a range of other illicit and licit drugs. I read an article recently where Richard Eckersley suggested that many aspects of modern life including social structural changes, such as family breakdown, excessive materialism, global warming, the changing diet and even the decline of religion were leading to a range of physical and psychological health problems in teenagers. Some of the health problems he highlighted were road accidents, drug use, diabetes and heart disease and mood disorders. Like the evolutionists Mckay talked about, Eckersley also believed that human’s haven’t had time to evolve to the stresses of modern life, which was contributing to these health issues.

Looking at the information overload theory, which describes a state of having too much information to make a decision or stay informed about a topic, causing distress. I wonder is the influence of the technological or information age and the huge array of sources from which we can gain information, having a detrimental effect on our social, psychological and pysical health. Television use and variety has skyrocketed, the internet gives us endless sources of information including youtube, wikipedia, and blog sites such as this one and facebook, and still other forms of media thrive. The stress of what to take in and analyse, and what to ignore may be getting too much.

There is also the aspect of the content, accuracy and impartiality of this constant flow of information. With such a variety of mediums it is almost impossible to gain accurate and neutral information, particularly when often those that are most biased or untested are more easily accessed or simply thrust in our face.

The simple solution would be to encourage everyone, especially youth, to seek out new information, make time to search for the truth and make their own decisions. However, if information overload is already causing them stress, how in this forever speedy, stressful new world are they to find the time and energy to seek out this information? Another article I read, suggested that Australian children are already sleeping more than 30 minutes less a night compared with 20 years ago, with 25% suggesting they are tired the majority of the time and their sleep quality is poor. If a quarter of Australia’s youth are always tired the sad thing is it may be easier to simply sit back and be informed by ‘Today Tonight’.

Would this an endless search for accurate and impartial information simply just cause less sleep and more stress and health problems?
It possibly would, but I think I’d be less stressed in the belief that I had some idea what was going on in the world or at least in this country.

Thankyou again for reading my rambling, I hope I made a point in there somewhere and comments and questions are definately welcome.

Happy studying guys!
Dave