March 29, 2024

Information overload

Are you on your phone? Is it within five feet of you?

Many of us are attached to our cellphone. We’re attached to the medium of communication; we’re attached to being accessible; and we’re attached to an endless sea of information available at our fingertips. It’s amazing — and it’s awful.

I haven’t been sleeping well at night and it’s in part due to my phone. Going to bed is the one time of day I find myself searching for new information and the cellphone is convenient. We’re bombarded with an information overload all day, especially on social media, and some of us even at night.

Here are some random things I’ve learned this week from spending too much time on the Internet:

• The Beatles recorded “Here Comes the Sun” on a summer day from 2:30 to 10:45 p.m. July 8, 1969.

• Two to three Americans die on average a year from bat rabies (CDC) and two to three athletes per year die from exercise-associated hyponatremia, or over-hydration.

• Ames barbecue restaurant Hickory Park prepares up to 24,000 pounds of meat a week.

• Cardinal Corner sells two frozen yogurts: soft serve raspberry and hard serve Heath.

• Chuck E. Cheese pizza restaurants were created by the inventor of the Atari video game system, Nolan Bushnell.

• A 94-year-old former Auschwitz concentration camp Nazi is on trial in Germany this month for accessory to 300,000 counts of murder. If convicted, he faces three to 15 years in prison.

• The women's World Cup final Sunday was the highest reached soccer game in United States history, reaching at least 22.86 million, according to TV Media Insights. Those figures are comparable to the 2014 World Series' Game 7 with 23.5 million viewers.

• FIFA Congress has a representation of 200 countries. It paid its 2015 women’s World Cup teams a total of $15 million whereas its 2014 men’s World Cup teams a total of $358 million.

• There are 1.147 billion landline telephones in the world and 6.915 billion cellphones, according to the New York Times.

• Wrigley Field organist Gary Pressy has played more than 2,300 consecutive games at the ballpark.

• According to the Surgical Technology International Journal, looking down at your phone or tablet is the equivalent of putting 60 pounds of weight on your spine, causing bodily harm over time.

• 2015 NBA Finals basketball stars, and arguably two of the best players in the game today, LeBron James and Stephen Curry, were born at the same hospital in the same town, Akron, Ohio.

• According to the CIA, the world population speaks the following languages: Mandarin Chinese 11.82 percent, Spanish 5.77 percent, English 4.67 percent, Hindi 3.62 percent, Arabic 3.3 percent, Portuguese 2.83 percent, Bengali 2.69 percent, Russian 2.33 percent, Japanese 1.7 percent, Javanese 1.15 percent and Standard German 1.09 percent.

This stimulation overload can’t be that good for us, but it is interesting.

We take in all this information but we need time to process, interpret and use it with some sort of purpose. Instead, we keep scrolling looking for more information — something new, more insightful, more entertaining or shocking.

I wonder what researchers think? When something even marvelous is discovered, half of society does not believe in its truth and the other half forgets what they have learned after 30 seconds. Or eight seconds.

I read our attention span and ability to focus has reduced over time to eight seconds. If you read this then congratulations — that’s practically a miracle. Now, go enjoy the outdoors.

Contact Kate Malott at 641-792-3121 ext. 6533 or kmalott@newtondailynews.com