Paris Demetriades
Every day we sit in front of one or several screens through which we get informed, entertained, and connected with other beings of our era, creatures that may be Homo sapiens like us, but may also be intangible entities like bots. Inside this astonishing reality, especially for someone who grew up in the previous century, one crucial question has emerged, particularly when it comes to news and information: how much of what constantly appears on our screens is real, and how much is manipulated or entirely fake? With the rise of artificial intelligence, even the most convincing things placed in front of us are now viewed with suspicion, treated as potentially deceptive, manufactured, or false.
Misinformation has therefore become one of the defining challenges of our time. Yet just as serious, perhaps even more serious, is information overload. How much more information, useful or useless, can the average human brain realistically process every single day? None, I would argue. We have reached the limit when it comes to overinformation. Or, to put it more bluntly, perhaps we have hit rock bottom. And this is not only our society’s problem. It is global, and perhaps it should be treated that way.
What we are living through is not progress. It is regression. A quick rational look around us sadly confirms it. No matter how interesting, polished, or reliable the dozens, if not hundreds, of reels I consume from my phone in a single day may be, the simple fact that there are so many of them is enough to lead me to one undeniable conclusion: by the time I go to sleep at night, the damage outweighs whatever benefit they offered.
And this decline seems endless, because every new attempt by platforms to “improve the user experience” quickly turns out worse than the last. A good example is the so called instant stories recently launched by Instagram. According to the platform’s logic, the goal is to help users recover personal connections that disappeared inside an algorithm driven universe where everything has become commodified. Instants supposedly allow people to share spontaneous, unfiltered moments from daily life with their online friends and followers. Beyond the traditional 24 hour stories, where users can see in real time who viewed them and where they can edit them before posting, whether lightly or heavily depending on mood and available time, instants work only through a single live camera shot that cannot be altered.
But did we really need to add this too to our lives? Were posts, reposts, and 24 hour stories not already more than enough? Did we really need to reduce even further the time and value attached to sharing something?
How many more platforms, how many more apps, how many more pages, professional or otherwise, informational or entertaining, do we supposedly need in order to “improve our experience” of life in general? What useful thing actually remains in our minds after this chaotic flood of overinformation that has consumed our entire existence? What memories are we creating? Are we creating memories at all, or are we slowly and inevitably heading toward collective brain decay, as the scholars behind the Oxford Dictionary aptly suggested when they named “brain rot” the word of the year last year?
In any case, an escape from the digital exhaustion created by the black screen, which has already started darkening everything around us, political life included, will not come from the handful of billionaire platform magnates who operate exactly as ruthless businessmen are expected to operate and will continue doing so.
What we neither want nor can tolerate is more noise in the endless stream of information.
What we want is more time.
Free time. Meaningful time.
