The Exhaustion of Keeping Up: Information Overload in the Modern Age

Monday. Opened my feed and the world had changed again over the weekend. A new model dropped, someone built something with it, someone else posted a hot take about it, and there were already three rebuttals to that take. By Tuesday, that model was obsolete. By Wednesday, a new meme was circulating, and by Thursday, knowing that meme made you the person who was behind the curve. By Friday, I couldn’t remember what I’d even looked at on Monday.

It’s not unpleasant. Honestly, it’s kind of fun. There’s a certain thrill in being quick to know new things, and a feeling akin to surfing in riding that speed. The problem is the waves don’t stop. One week ends, and the next begins, and the volume of new things inside it shows no sign of diminishing. At some point, you start to wonder if you’re surfing, or just being swept away.

Almost 500 years ago, a scholar in Switzerland said something similar. There were too many books, he complained. He’d been lost in the labyrinth of them for three years. Of course, back then, “too many” meant eighteen thousand volumes – a different scale entirely than today.

It’s Happened Before

Conrad Gessner, the name might be unfamiliar, but his work is not. In 1545, he created the first universal bibliography, attempting to organize the flood of books unleashed by the printing revolution. He cataloged twelve thousand titles by eighteen hundred authors. And he wrote in the preface: “a confused and harmful abundance of books.” Today, that’s akin to the person who created Google complaining that there are too many search results.

Three hundred years later, when the telegraph changed the world, the same thing happened. In 1881, American neurologist George Beard coined the diagnosis of “neurasthenia.” The causes? Five in number: steam power, periodicals, the telegraph, science, and the mental activity of women (a limitation of the era). Beard focused particularly on the telegraph. “Before Morse, merchants worried much less.” A world where price fluctuations in a western town could be broadcast nationwide within an hour. The structure of real-time information creating real-time pressure began then.

In 1970, Alvin Toffler coined the phrase “future shock.” “The overwhelming stress and disorientation caused by too much change in too short a time.” His book was the first to bring the term “information overload” to a wider audience. It sold six million copies. A number that speaks to how many people felt it.

Seneca also complained that “an excess of books distracts the mind,” and the Book of Ecclesiastes states that “of making many books there is no end.” The complaint that there’s too much information is as old as humanity itself.

So, the fatigue we’re feeling now isn’t entirely new. What’s different is the speed. And the fact that we’re performing that speed for an audience. Gessner could read (or not read) books in private. Now, not knowing is a public fact.

The Names We Give This State

There are people who have put a name to this feeling. (Naming it makes it a little better.)

German sociologist Hartmut Rosa calls it “social acceleration.” Technology speeds up, social change speeds up, and the tempo of life speeds up. Three things feeding each other in a cycle. The strange thing is that technology saves us time, yet we have less of it. Rosa calls this “the shrinking present.” The time we have to predict the next month based on the last is diminishing. Consider email, for example: the time it takes to check it has decreased, but the number of times we check it has increased exponentially. Nothing is saved.

Han Byung-chul goes a step further. This exhaustion isn’t imposed on us, he argues. We do it to ourselves. In *The Fatigue Society*, he calls the modern person a “performance subject.” No one forces us to scroll through trend-setting videos until dawn, to feel left behind, to think we need to see more. “The violence of positivity exhausts rather than depriving, saturates rather than excluding.” A structure where the exploiter and the exploited are the same person. That’s why it’s so hard to escape.

Douglas Rushkoff wrote about “present shock.” Scrolling through Reels for more than 30 minutes and realizing, “What was I even looking at?” Individual content has no beginning, middle, or end. The disappearance of narrative. “We may be in the midst of a massive existential crisis, but we’re too busy to notice.”

There’s one name I want to give this state. “Synchronicity fatigue.” It’s not the amount of information that’s exhausting, it’s the pressure to react at the same time, at the same speed as everyone else. It’s not just a problem for news. Whether it’s technology, fashion, or investment, the same pattern repeats. A Reuters Institute study in 2024 found that 39% of respondents globally said they were “overwhelmed by the amount of news.” That was 28% in 2019. An 11-percentage-point increase in five years. The speed of exhaustion is accelerating too.

But there’s a basis for trying to cope. A study that had participants limit their social media use to under an hour a day found a significant reduction in loneliness, depression, and FOMO after three weeks. It’s not about cutting it out completely. Just reducing it had an effect.

Of course, there are counterarguments. Keeping up with trends is social connection, and opportunity. The wave of trends is a launchpad for creators. But whether those opportunities are available to everyone on equal terms is another question. It’s not about catching everything, or missing everything. It’s about finding somewhere in between. (A very unsatisfying answer, I know.)

Monday is coming. The feed will change again over the weekend. A new model, a new meme, a new hot take.

The difference is one thing. I know now that I don’t have to see it all. I might forget it anyway.

Gessner complained about too many books, but he ended up creating a catalog of them all. Cataloging eighteen thousand titles didn’t stop him from writing more. There are things you can do in the face of excess besides giving up.

I haven’t closed the feed yet. But I’m scrolling a little slower today.

References

[1] Conrad Gessner, Bibliotheca Universalis, Christopher Froschauer, 1545. Academic analysis in the context of information overload: Ann M. Blair, Too Much to Know, Yale University Press, 2010.

[2] George M. Beard, American Nervousness: Its Causes and Consequences, G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1881.

[3] Alvin Toffler, Future Shock, Random House, 1970.

[4] Hartmut Rosa, Acceleration (2005), 영역: Social Acceleration: A New Theory of Modernity, Columbia University Press, 2013.

[5] Byeong-cheol Han, Müdigkeitsgesellschaft (2010), Korean translation: 『Fatigued Society』, translated by Tae-hwan Kim, Literature and Jisungsa, 2012.

[6] Douglas Rushkoff, Present Shock: When Everything Happens Now, Current (Penguin), 2013.

[7] Hartmut Rosa, Resonanz (2016), 영역: Resonance: A Sociology of Our Relationship to the World, Polity Press, 2019.

[8] Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, Digital News Report 2024, Oxford University. https://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/digital-news-report/2024

[9] Chao Zheng et al., “Relationship Between Fear of Missing Out and Social Media Fatigue: A Systematic Review”, Journal of Medical Internet Research, 2025. DOI: 10.2196/75701

[10] Hunt et al., “Limiting Social Media Decreases Loneliness and Depression”, Psychology of Popular Media, American Psychological Association, 2024. DOI: 10.1037/ppm0000536