Staying human in an age of information overload

“Source?”
“Grok, is this real?”

These are modern prayers of the scroll. We ask the algorithm for certainty, knowing full well it can’t give it to us. 

Across social media platforms, verification has become a crowdsourcing exercise with no designated leader. Instead of doing the work ourselves, we wait for someone else to tell us what’s true. Thinking has been outsourced, to the feed, AI, and to whoever has gone viral that day. 

The news cycle is relentless. Official sources speak in a passive voice, quietly removing who did what. 

How many more “officer-involved” shooting will we read about without clarification on how the officer got involved? Military spokespeople being reported credibly blaming an  “error”  that killed children waiting in line for water. With a flick of the wrist and a sleight of hand, responsibility is erased while credibility is platformed — and we keep scrolling, consuming what we’re told. 

Summer makes everything feel blurrier while the internet keeps everything sharp. Most people are busy, distracted, or burned out. It's easier to skim than to sit with a complicated thought to synthesize.

Confidence is part of the problem, but the speed of certainty is the danger.

Loud, Wrong, and Viral

Living in DC through the administration change has been a constant uphill battle in the information wars.

Political distortion has already done its work: riling up affirmation biases where nuance was needed.

Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown of information. You ruminate on the pros and cons of being perceived as a know-it-all. But it’s more than that — it’s about not wanting to let rumors slide,  especially if it’s being shared in good faith. There’s also a grief that you sit with on how smart people get caught in bad information loops. Not out of carelessness, but because the system is built for speed, not accuracy. 

We're living in a comprehension crisis season. Most of us haven’t even noticed the forecast.

How We Got Here

I was drawn to the internet for the very reason that it still resonates: information access as a form of power. 

The strange intimacy of chatrooms and the passive aggression of away messages shaped my online literacy. I built websites in middle school, stitching together digital corners of the world because I was curious, creative, and if I'm honest, probably in desperate need of an adult. 

Xanga, LiveJournal, MySpace, eventually Tumblr. Each platform was a different canvas for self-expression, but also windows into what others were sharing. I learned HTML tags from friends — digital literacy through peer-to-peer knowledge transfer. 

That internet was clunky and chaotic, not yet primed for optimization. Soon enough conspiracies found their ways onto credible sites. By 13, I had watched the entirety of “Loose Change” on YouTube, trying to conceptualize how jet fuel melts steel beams. What felt like insider knowledge was actually my first encounter with manipulative editing and how conspiracy theories exploit our desire for simple explanations to complex events. An early warning that not everything I encountered online deserved my trust. 

The ascendance of instant information was both a blessing and a curse. It democratized knowledge but sacrificed corroboration. Now, with blue checkmarks signify payment not veracity. The work of discernment has been doubled. 

By college, I felt fluent in navigating the online world. An ethos writing class distilled what I’d been learning intuitively: check for bias, analyze how information is presented, know your sources. These skills translated directly to my later research work — confirming information across multiple sources, using Boolean operators when Google was still mostly a search engine rather than an ad platform.

At the beginning of the internet there was a patience built into the process. We’ve now lost that. I catch myself getting frustrated when a webpage takes more than three seconds to load. The compression of time has compressed our tolerance for complexity.

The Literary Collapse

If you don't use a muscle, it atrophies. The same goes for thinking. The ability to hold complexity, understand a theme, and sit with gray areas.

The pandemic left a generation of kids behind, socially and academically. In 2022, the National Assessment of Educational Progress reported the largest drop in reading scores since 1990, a five-point decline for 9 year olds in just two years.

This isn't a lecture against the youth — rather, that the conditions for deep reading are disappearing. Attention is scattered by design. Notifications interrupt the paragraph. Group chats coexist with the text. There's no protected space for focus, and when everything's urgent, nothing gets processed.

By some estimates, nearly 50% of American adults read below a six-grade level. About 1 in 5 are functionally illiterate, meaning they can sound out words but can't follow through a text that asks for textured understanding. Filling out forms. Reading instructions. The US ranks 14th among OECD countries for adult literacy: comfortably mid-tier, uncomfortably stagnant.

When literacy breaks down, so does nuance. You can't follow an argument if you've never practiced holding multiple ideas at once.

It's now a concern of under-information. We're consuming faster than we can metabolize.

When you live ina system long enough that wasn't designed for comprehension, intricacies start to feel like a threat. Certainty, no matter how brittle, feels better.

Soft Eyes, Sharp Mind

I catch myself in these loops, too.  

“I saw an article online”  is nine times out of ten, in fact, a long-form TikTok. A headline screenshot stripped of nuance and passed around like gossip at a party where no one knows the full story. It can feel like a 5-minute voice note from a friend at 1 AM—urgent but half-informed.

Last week, I started typing a comment before realizing I hadn’t actually finished the article I was responding to. The embarrassment was private but potent. How often do we react to the idea of something rather than the thing itself? 

A 2020 NIH study suggests our brains are physically changing in response to digital consumption patterns. The constant dopamine hits from scrolling create addiction pathways that make sustained attention harder. We’re not just choosing not to read deeply. Many of us are losing the neural architecture that makes it possible. 

I've started keeping a physical notebook where I write down one thing I've learned deeply. It's my small ritual of resistance against the skim-and-forget culture in 2025. 

But comprehension isn’t optional. It’s survival. 

Being well-informed and being soft are not at odds. Staying human in this climate requires both. We owe it to each other to learn the truth about the world we're living in: to know things fully, not partially. To be the person who asks real questions, not rhetorical ones designed for clout. To actually be curious, not just perform curiosity.

Logging off isn't the answer. Neither is doomscrolling in silence. The answer is somewhere in the middle: deliberate attention.

What Helps (A Soft Cuts List)

• Pause before you post. Ask yourself: Do I know this or did I just see it online?
• Notice your body while you scroll. Clenched jaw? Quick pulse? That's information, too.
• Finish the article, or admit you haven't. No shame in reading slower.
• Diversify your inputs. One source isn't a worldview.
• Learn to say, "I don't know enough about that yet." It isn't a weakness.
• Don't confuse confidence with comprehension. The loudest aren't always the wise.
• There’s no prize for being first if you’re wrong. 
• Comprehension is connection, it’s care. It keeps us from mistaking noise for knowledge.

Each time we choose to read fully, to verify before sharing, to sit with complexity rather than reaching for the simple answer, we're performing a small act of care—for ourselves, for truth, and for each other. 

In a world optimized for reaction, comprehension becomes a radical act.

Staying soft is a choice. Staying sharp is a responsibility. 

Thanks for reading to the end as I experiment with longer form writing.

Until soon,

Sarah

soft power strategist / daughter of florists / fan of deliberate edits.