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Burnout and Information Technologies
Magazines (online and print), journals, online news, all double their sales and increase click rates when they feature stories about dealing with stress, burnout, depression and anxiety. Sales of drugs that improve focus, help us think and work faster (Ritalin, Aderall, Taurin etc.) and related products like super caffeinated beverages are rising.
This may well have a lot to do with information communication technologies (ICT), like social media, browsers, smartphones and the apps we use, messaging services from WhatsApp to Telegram and iMessenger. The fact that everything is always on, always communicating, 24/7, 365 days a year at a global scale. Our brains can’t sync with this rate of communication.
ICT tools enable us to start a conversation and walk away, only to come back with it still going on. An exponential change from just over thirty years ago.
Our brains evolved to manage a certain information environment; nature. To understand and interpret the land around us, the weather. The movement of animals and the plants around them. To watch where the bees were going to get that sweet honey.
A great example of this is Indigenous First People’s languages. The Mi’kmaq and many others use verbs to describe the features of nature such as hills, mountains and valleys because they are always changing…
