Mind Over What Matters: The Age of TMI

It is common for our society to think of exhaustion in mostly physical terms, but I think it is high time we address today’s climate of mental exhaustion and what it may mean for our current era of too much information.

We live in an age unlike any other before. Content of all kinds is easily available, readily accessible, and widespread enough to now be considered a part of everyday life. In this age of information, people will have to contend more with mental overload and its accompanying impact—burnout.

One Small Ass Processing Center of Information

Can we give our brains some credit, please?

The brain is an essential organ that works to maintain a healthy and functioning human being. Our brains are our small ass processing centers of information. Every process that happens within our bodies is regulated by the brain. These processes can take place because of the brain’s ability to collect and receive information from the body.

But the job of collecting, receiving, and processing information is not just an internal one. Our brains are also responsible for managing external information. Every day we receive information from our many environments. Thanks to our brains, we can perceive external stimuli in a way that ensures we produce the best option to maintain our safety.

Looking at history, humanity has come a long way from the hunter-gatherering days of old where threats from the natural world were continuously scrutinized. Our ancestors were able to deal with an undoubtedly huge, albeit necessary amount of stress. Because of their brains’ capacity to gauge their environments, they were able to survive to birth generations of humans.

This is starkly opposed to where we find ourselves now.

We are constantly forcing our brains to process more amounts of random information, mostly for the sake of content consumption. So how can we be shocked that our brains are exhausted?

Every day we set our brains up for information overload and create the kind of stress that leads to mental exhaustion. The result of which, I think, will be a collective burnout—if we haven’t reached this already.

Intent on Content Increase

According to an article published last year by Forbes magazine, the average daily time people spent consuming content was 6 hours and 59 minutes. This statistic was derived from a study of over 10,000 people in 5 countries.

(Social media, news websites/apps, streaming services, TV, and video/mobile games were all the subcategories that made up the broad category of content).

An important thing to note about the study’s findings is that the statistic doubled its usual number (largely due to the stay-at-home restrictions during the pandemic’s beginning). Before the pandemic, the average daily time people spent consuming content was a little under three and a half hours. So typically, people are processing a good amount of information daily.

Considering this, I think that we will see an increase in the typical rate of consumption, especially if residuals from last year’s surge stick around to affect what has been recorded as the previous rate.

So where does that lead us in terms of burnout?

Where Overload Meets Exhaustion

I think the best environment we can see overload play out as exhaustion and then burnout is in the workplace. For example, a few years back I worked as a customer service rep where data entry was a big part of the job. I had the task of quickly processing sensitive information. A typical workday looked like two 15-minute breaks, lunch, and an extra load of customers to service.

This was all while juggling my almost certain addiction to social media.

I remember rewarding myself with 20 double-taps on IG if I served at least 10 customers before my first break. If I had an unpleasant experience with a coworker, customer, or management, that would almost always unlock 1 venting status update on FB. Other times it looked like scrolling my newsfeed to escape the stress I sensed mounting from overworking myself.

Of course, indulging in these things didn’t make the exhaustion I was feeling from the workplace any better.

Increased lateness to work became call-outs that became longer vacations that never seemed to correlate with feeling better. I was still sluggish, moody, and irritated every time I returned. And I found that the passion I once held for the job was gone. Eventually, I put in my two-week notice. The job had become mentally exhausting, and I had burned out.

What This All Means for Society

Recently, there’s been a growing concern surrounding the topic of burnout, particularly within the workforce. According to a poll done by Gallup last year and a survey done by Indeed earlier this year, employee burnout has already begun to take serious effect.

Is the increase in content consumption at all related to the increase in employee burnout society is seeing? And if it is, how can we determine how big of an influence content consumption has in terms of exhaustion?

Previously, I talked about leaving a job that exhausted me to resignation and how my use of social media seemed to have exacerbated my symptoms. Given society’s recent increase in content consumption and the increase in employee burnout within society at large, I can't help but wonder: Is the increase in content consumption at all related to the increase in employee burnout society is seeing? And if it is, how can we determine how big of an influence content consumption has in terms of exhaustion?

I'm not sure how we can isolate the issue enough to begin gaining answers, but one thing I do have full confidence in knowing is that our brains need a break. In the same way we can’t eat more food when our stomachs are full and in need of digestion, our brains should not consume more information if it is still working through processing the information it has already received.

When we overload our brains we create the kind of stressful environment burnout needs to manifest. And I think that we, in turn, develop a sensitivity to exhaustion when we don’t allow our brains time to rest from overstimulation.

As a society, we will have to come together to reexamine how we view stress and the brain, the demands of the workplace, the work/life balance, and the individual responsibility we all have when managing stress. If not, I think we may see a collective burnout very soon. One of which we are not currently ready to handle.