I think one of the biggest reason for this is the ease of access via cellphones and evolution of search algorithms. It's so easy to fill all the "idle" time by flipping open Reddit to check the most popular topics without ever needing to read the long source materials.
Similar way YouTube offers endless amounts of new videos for practically anything. Every time I sit down on computer I have an endless playlist of music playing on background.
I have noticed that my habits have turned from investing time into reading to finding the most popular opinion of certain thing and going to next one. Spending more than 3 minutes on a topic would mean that reading through hundreds of articles would take the whole day so filtering the most interesting stuff is necessary. I also feel that the articles themselves are becoming more and more clickbaity for revenue so being able to just skip them is very useful.
I can understand how you feel on this one too. You can spend hours getting all of the relevant source information on specific topics, or run with current trends of speakers and blissfully speak on it in willful ignorance never knowing if you're misinformed. The latter is how I believe echo chambers are formed. Either way, click bait is an easy dodge for me as well. What other tools do you use to sort through topics?
ReplyDeleteI find that subscribing to topics that interest me is a very good start on filtering most of the "useless" posts away. Since I mostly use Reddit it's very easy to curate what kind of content ends up in the feed.
DeleteSmaller subreddits have better exposure on content posted on them but they usually are not as active.
Finding the right sources for interesting content is the hardest part.