What Are We So Terrible On The Internet?

Most people can store about seven pieces of information in their heads before it starts to get blurry. Maybe eight.

For example, if I gave you a sequence of five numbers, you could probably remember them pretty easily. You could quote the sequence backwards and forwards, add the second and fourth digits together, multiply each digit by two and recite the new sequence, you name it. 

But the more digits you add, the harder it gets. And once you get above nine or ten, it becomes almost impossible to keep it all in your head. Your brain starts to flip the order of digits or forget some entirely. Performing calculations becomes too confusing. Eventually, as the digits accumulate, your brain just gives up. 

Working memory is designed to hold small, relevant chunks of information for short periods of time. It’s useful for decision making and reasoning and pattern recognition. It’s not meant to be limitless.

After all, if it took up too much space, you might forget something that truly matters. 

Fifty years ago, there was a hard limit to the amount of bad news you had to keep in your head. 

There were the ordinary misfortunes and tragedies of daily life; a death in the family, a sick pet, an unforeseen accident. You might read about a natural disaster in the newspaper or hear about a declaration of war on the radio. But generally speaking, you’d make it through the day hearing about nothing more dramatic than your neighbour's bowel issues.

This is no longer the case. 

A young woman murdered in Sydney. A flood kills thousands in Libya. Yet another mass shooting, this time in Maine. 

You can absorb all of this human tragedy before you’ve had your morning coffee. 

Five children die in a boating accident. A 9-year-old girl is kidnapped from a campground. A family loses everything in a house fire.

You process this on your commute to work. 

A sixteen-year-old girl beaten to death by the morality police in Iran. 78 refugees drown in the Mediterranean Sea, 6000 civilians die in the Israel/Palestine conflict. 

Under normal circumstances, you could only absorb a fraction of this before becoming overwhelmed. Not to mention that it would take all day to dig it up. 

But today, not only do we carry a 24/7/365 purveyor of bad news in our pockets, but algorithms are tailored to deliver whatever kind of bad news that inflames us the most. 

We absorb tragedy on a scale that our brains simply aren’t calibrated to deal with. We’re fed rock-solid opinions about real human lives based on selectively edited clips and packaged in white-hot outrage.

It numbs us.