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Definition: information overload


A symptom of the high-tech age, which is too much information for one person to absorb in a world of expanding communications. Information overload primarily comes from the gigantic amount of content transmitted over the Internet, including websites, search engine results, blogs and social media. Web pages bombard the senses with ads, and junk email (spam) is just plain aggravating. Combine digital information with traditional sources such as TV, magazines, newsletters and junk postal mail, and information overload is a fact of modern life in the developed world. See Data Smog, disinformation and digital vacation.

Solving a Technical Problem
Posing a question about a hardware or software problem on Google, Bing or other search engine generally returns dozens of results. However, very often, many explanations conflict with others. Which one is right? All the assistance in the world is available on the Web, but sifting through which help actually helps can be exasperating. Information overload also includes the often indecipherable documentation that accompanies every product, as well as the poorly designed user interfaces on everyday applications (see RTFM and user interface).

Flat Out - Too Darn Much
It boils down to this: the volume of information that crossed our brains in "one week" at the end of the 20th century is more than a person received in a lifetime at the beginning of it. See first-time user and social media unplugger.