Are we over-consuming content?

Back to writing out loud <cool name eh?> after two month of writer’s block (kindoff) situation... back with this topic!

In the last 1.5 year when the pandemic hit us, we have exponentially increased the consumption of the contents which are streaming anywhere *LITERALLY ANYWHERE*, from Netflix to Takatak and from Aurora Runaway to the next popular reel trends and that too during the world crisis.

Let's recap 3-5 years back on our content consumption. Less than half of which we consume now. Why? 

Because there were no dimensions for OTT platforms, Lockdown, High speed internet availability with minimum cost and boredom.

Our life is like a non-stop episode of the hottest web series with 100+ notifications across all the apps we use and comebacks to most of the conversations by our favourite meme templates.

So to summarize the above rant is that - we are intaking or consuming content in large quantities. From Money heist to Rasodey main kaun tha? And let’s not forget to mention #shweta your mic is on to One more episode of friends.

We have become so obsessed with content that we won’t even go to places which are not instagrammable (Yes this is Term, and not made up by me 😐😑)

Even in any special events like weddings, we all have seen that old soft bound photo binding of our parents or relatives weddings where we can actually comprehend that all they cared about is the ceremony, people, food and some drama. 😁😂

But now we have seen endless reels of the supposedly candid video of the bride getting ready and dancing in the most trending wedding songs. 

And as a result everyone here is a content creator now, the person who has actually worked on the piece of art for 10 month, or the person who has done lip-sync for the same song in the 30 sec reel. 

The saddest part is that every profession from fitness coach to a doctor is making the same type of content as per the trendy algorithm. We all have mindlessly scrolled the reels or youtube shorts with the same viral music for countless minutes.

Let's talk data,

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It would take 37.2 year to completely watch Netflix Library. 😧

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But the most surprising thing is :

HOW ON EARTH WE ARE ABLE TO CONSUME SO MUCH CONTENT?

All the credit goes to Infinite scrolling.

Infinite scrolling is a web-design technique that loads content continuously as the user scrolls down the page, eliminating the need for pagination.

This was brought into most websites and apps by promising to provide users with a better experience. However, the good is often accompanied by the bad and the ugly.

Psychologically, human minds like and tend to find it easier to have hierarchy and structures that are easy to navigate. But infinite scrolling most of the time leaves users feeling lost as they travel down a page that never ends.

The good : With the increasing popularity of social media validation, massive amounts of data are being consumed; infinite scrolling offers an efficient way to browse that ocean of data, without having to wait for pages to preload. Rather, the user enjoys a truly responsive experience in any device they’re using.

The bad :  With so much data to consume, users must stay focused on the information they are searching for.  Do users always want a never-ending stream of information? Analytics show that when users search for information on Google, only 6% advance to the second page. So, 94% of users are satisfied with receiving only 10 results, which suggests that users find Google’s ranking of results to be relevant.

So what is the imapact of all this on us? Should we even bother or just go with the flow?All coming up in the Part II, next Wednesday

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