Having the world at our fingertips has diminished thoughtfulness.
“It’s never been easier to be or say or do, blank,” is a phrase you can fill in the rest with almost anything in the Internet age.
It’s a saying repeated each year and somehow seems to remain true—including the fact it’s never been easier to have a voice. This lack of barrier between thoughts, and published opinions has caused extremes in discourse, desensitizing a growing population to an ever-increasing number of topics.
Before social media, opinions used to be widely distributed through physical media like newspapers. These types of media facilitated the production of deliberate and thoughtful pieces, a byproduct of these types of outlets.
The format of these mediums ensures key opinions of the community are presented in a digestible format, daily, or more infrequently in weekly or monthly issues, and to be edited by a team trained and practiced in journalism.
However, as technology becomes readily available, sharing media also becomes more easily distributed across communities, with a much wider reach. The advent of home printers and the Internet have allowed people to access and share their own opinions more broadly than ever. We’ve cut out the middleman, and it comes with troubling effects.
In the present day, social media platforms like Reddit, Instagram, and X have allowed everyone with an internet connection and an electronic device to share and digest opinions from every walk of life.
There are many merits to the internet: it allows s to connect with others across the globe, and forges avenues for sharing stories that otherwise would never see the light of day.
The inverse though, is s flooding every channel with a barrage of content. Collectively, s produce an infinite amount of information to sift through, making it difficult to parse critical thought from a knee-jerk reaction.
It’s often easy to ignore the noise, especially pertaining to topics irrelevant to you. However, the noise has now become the average, and it’s unclear where the moderate opinions of a general public, and discussion, should lie.
Now, to spark discourse, opinions are often pushed to the extremes, drawing out the boundaries of what’s considered noise to newer heights.
Earlier this year, an attempt on Donald Trump’s life was made during a campaign rally. Within minutes, alongside news of the event were s posting jokes and highly opinionated videos to all media outlets.
Thoughts that would have been unthinkable to publish years ago, now occupy the mainstream consciousness and leave it equally as fast. It’s hard to be shocked by anything, when any ing thought has, and will, be put into the world without a moment’s consideration.
It’s no secret long-form media has gone out of style, but forcing an author to think and contextualize articles into writing has been a structure for a reason—it’s a better recipe for moderate thought.
Perhaps it’s time to go back to an older age, when media came out daily, and people were forced to proofread.
Herbert is a fourth-year computer engineering student and The Journal‘s Assistant Sports Editor.
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