In 2010, Denuelle Meyer wrote about the idea that we should “be informed, not inundated” when it comes to discerning information. Today, are being informed by being inundated with information instead of seeking truth by researching, feeling into our own truths, and coming to our own conclusions. We are faced with so much information, reinforced by social media, news, and other outlets that it is hard to process this information, especially when the information is so negative like we are seeing today.

Mary E. McNaughton-Cassill, PhD, is a professor of clinical psychology at the University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA) and has done research suggesting that the brain is predisposed to attend to negative information. When media content makes us feel angry, scared or sad, we orient toward the disturbing story to make sure we know how to protect ourselves. This can also be described as the Fight-or-flight response.  A problem occurs when the threat is far removed from us, amplified by the media and out of our control, all of which can make us feel helpless or hopeless.  In other words, too much information — particularly from single or biased sources — can distort our worldview and as a result, our truths are what is being fed to us. 

This correlates with concepts described in the book, “Zucked” where Roger McNamee discusses the ideas of psychological tools used to create Facebook addiction, as well as tools used for mass persuasion.  He discusses the repercussions of being inundated with so much information on social media that it becomes hard to distinguish between what is true and what is not.  Add to that the extent to which the media capitalizes on people’s fears, and there becomes a deeply embedded negative feedback loop where outrage increases people’s time on social media, and misinformation spreads more effectively than facts.  This perpetuation of negative and often false information can lead to tribalism, partisanship, conspiracy theories, or even worse as we are seeing unfold now - with the politically motivated divides, riots, and polarity as a country.  In my own life, I have noticed the implications of this as a highly sensitive/intuitive because the constant stream of negative news creates anxiety, sadness and even fear. All of this overstimulation can lead to the turning off of my natural abilities like I have discussed in earlier posts.

A filter bubble – a term coined by Internet activist Eli Pariser – is a concept describing a state of intellectual isolation that can result from personalized searches when a website algorithm selectively guesses what information a user would like to see based on information about the user (geographic location, past searches, etc.).  As a result, users become separated from information that disagrees with their viewpoints, effectively isolating them in their own cultural or ideological bubbles.  The results of the U.S. presidential election in 2016 have been associated with the influence of social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook and as a result have called into question the effects of the "filter bubble" phenomenon on user exposure to fake news and echo chambers.

The topic even became a talking point in the run-up to the 2016 election. Days before Americans headed to the polls, President Barack Obama spoke with HBO talk show host Bill Maher about the “fun-house mirrors” distorting the truth in news, and the effect this has had on the US political system.  In his farewell address, President Obama included a warning about filter bubbles and the dangers of fragmentation, in real life and on social media, alike:

“For too many of us, it’s become safer to retreat into our own bubbles, whether in our neighborhoods or college campuses or places of worship or our social media feeds, surrounded by people who look like us and share the same political outlook and never challenge our assumptions. The rise of naked partisanship, increasing economic and regional stratification, the splintering of our media into a channel for every taste—all this makes this great sorting seem natural, even inevitable. And increasingly, we become so secure in our bubbles that we accept only information, whether true or not, that fits our opinions, instead of basing our opinions on the evidence that’s out there.” - https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/01/president-barack-obama-farewell-address

At the time of his speech, 62 percent of U.S. adults said they got their news from social media, often relying on news stories shared within their own self-selected digital bubbles.  (Technology such as social media) “lets you go off with like-minded people, so you're not mixing and sharing and understanding other points of view.” — Bill Gates 2017 in Quartz.

I will talk about the political implications of blindly following any topic later. But we can look at a light hearted example of this, where Pyshics-Astronomy.Org posted an article on April 25, 2019: ”Marijuana Contains "Alien DNA" From Outside Of Our Solar System, NASA Confirms,” demonstrating the new trend to blindly like/share articles without reading them.