Digital overdose?

Control your information. Don’t let it control you.

By Ashley Milne-Tyte

First it was email; then came texting, blogs, podcasts, Facebook, Twitter and all the handheld devices to access them; and now there’s Google+. We are bombarded with information and ways to communicate. We can stay connected all day and all night, and some of us do, often to the frustration of family members. But with so much information screaming for attention, it can be hard to concentrate on anything for long. And there’s always that suspicion that something important may be falling through the cracks. So what is the torrent of bits and bytes really doing to us?

“We have this perception that we are more efficient with all these gadgets and new programs. But the studies on multitasking have actually found we make more errors as a result of it.”

Dr. Gary Small, a professor of psychiatry and bio-behavioral sciences at UCLA’s Semel Institute

Digital distractions

Mark Hurst, president of consulting firm Creative Good and author of Bit Literacy, a book on managing digital overload, says the sheer amount of information we try to process each day interferes with our ability to get things done, and even to think properly. “It reaches a psychological and emotional level that begins to affect quality of life,” he says. “People simply cannot function fully when they are constantly distracted. You can fake it to some extent and have a conversation with a friend or spouse across the room while you’re reading email, but you’re not doing either very well.”

Dr. Gary Small is a professor of psychiatry and bio-behavioral sciences at UCLA’s Semel Institute, and co-author of iBrain: Surviving the Technological Alteration of the Modern Mind. He says, “We have this perception that we are more efficient with all these gadgets and new programs. But the studies on multitasking have actually found we make more errors as a result of it.” He says we are working faster, but working sloppier.

Digital delights

But it’s tough to rein in our screen time because, according to Small, the ever-extending menu of digital delights (or devilry, depending on your point of view) is catnip for the human brain. “Our brains are hardwired to crave newness and variety and what appear to be more appealing and interesting stimuli,” he says. “So we are constantly scanning the environment for things that might be more exciting than the mental task at hand.”

Psychological impact

Ultimately, though, Small says all this mental toggling “puts the brain in a stressful state.” He says the brain is a bit like a computer: You have to open up one program and shut down another for it to work optimally.

Marcia Scherer, a psychologist and president of the Institute for Matching Person and Technology, says she regularly sees clients who are struggling to keep their heads above the digital waters. “You can see it on their faces, in the way they carry themselves, their posture—technology overload can wear somebody down so quickly,” she says. Apart from the strain of trying to process too much at once, relationships can suffer when one or both partners are focused on their gadgets rather than each other.

Small says there’s evidence to suggest that with young people “it is interfering with their human contact skills … developing empathy, looking someone in the eye during conversation.” On the physical side, Scherer says too much screen time is contributing to the country’s high obesity rate.

Scherer believes some people’s hunger for information—the insatiable need to check Facebook or email first thing in the morning (or during the night), for example—can be classified as addiction. She says to determine whether you are an addict, ask if all the screen time is interfering with your ability to do your job properly and if your family and intimate relationships are suffering as a result of your need to constantly check in. She works with plenty of clients who fit these criteria. “We almost need Tech Users Anonymous at this point,” she says.

The business of keeping the flood of communication in check is harder for what Small calls “digital natives,” those who grew up with the Web, than it is for their non-native peers. Non-natives remember a world without always-on connectivity. Natives do not.

Digital freedom

Anyone who wants to avoid information overload, or dig out from under it, can. The key to being free, Scherer, Hurst and Small say, is to feel that you are controlling the technology, not the other way around.

Hurst says it comes down to personal responsibility. “The root of the problem is that people have abdicated their responsibility to companies and services,” he says. “They feel like if they don’t ‘keep up’ they’re somehow going to be left out.” He says it’s up to us to make sensible decisions about what we will and won’t spend time on each day.

People should consciously develop offline habits, such as leaving their desks to go out for a walk or having a face-to-face conversation with a colleague, according to Small. He also recommends limiting the time you spend poring over email. “Set aside time in the mornings to catch up on those emails so you don’t feel anxiety throughout the day,” he says. “Then move on and get to it again later.”

But Hurst says there’s no need to ration email time. He says the problem with email overload is that “people get anxious because they’re afraid they’re forgetting something they need to accomplish,” something that may have been buried in their bulging inbox. He advocates migrating action items to an online to-do list each day and tackling only those items. Everything else can either be put on a to-do list for a different day or filed away. This way, he says, you can concentrate on the important stuff and regain a chunk of time previously spent toggling from one email to the next every other minute.

The same idea goes for social media. “I’m always looking for the fewest number of sources to keep me sufficiently informed,” says Hurst. He has more than 4,000 Twitter followers, but, to stay sane, follows only 45 people himself.

“Digital tools have the potential to be incredibly helpful and effective in improving work and life,” says Hurst. We just have to make those tools work for us, rather than let them turn us into ever more distracted screen slaves.

Ashley Milne-Tyte is a New York-based writer and reporter who specializes in communication issues. She has reported on numerous aspects of business and the economy for American Public Media’s Marketplace. Her print pieces have been published in The Wall Street Journal, the New York Daily News, Financial Times and Independent (London).

“I’m always looking for the fewest number of sources to keep me sufficiently informed.”

Mark Hurst, president of consulting firm Creative Good and author of Bit Literacy