Only the Tiniest Sliver of Humanity Has Been Bombarded with This Much News

I kind of said my point in the title.

But it’s true: when you think about the entire span of human existence, we’re living in the tiniest fraction of history where people receive constant, up-to-date streams of global, national, and local news. No human generation before us has ever experienced this level of information all at once.

I started thinking about this while listening to a podcast that mentioned TV news anchors from not-too-long ago — Ted Koppel, Peter Jennings, Katie Couric, Dan Rather. I realized I’m probably part of the last age group that remembers when the news happened primarily at specific times of day. You’d catch it in the morning or the evening, or read about it later in a newspaper. That was it.

Even into the mid-2000s — I remember turning on the 6 p.m. news daily in 2005 while cooking dinner — the world felt connected, but our information still had boundaries. Before 24-hour coverage, before smartphones, most people only knew what was happening locally or what they could read about after the fact.

It’s important to stay informed. It’s even more important to take action. These aren’t abstract stories — they’re real people, real places, and the real natural world we share. This is true locally, and it’s true globally. We’re connected, and our struggles are connected. But our brains weren’t built to process everything all at once, all the time.

We live in the smallest sliver of human history to experience this constant flood of information.

I don’t say this as an excuse to check out (though taking breaks helps). I say it so we can give ourselves — and one another — a bit of grace. Of course it feels overwhelming sometimes. Doomscrolling has existed for, what, maybe twenty years tops? For most of us, probably ten. This is new terrain for the human nervous system.

Here’s where I’m really going with this:

Maybe it’s worth stepping outside, getting to know our neighbors, and caring and advocating for what’s right in front of us. And it’s definitely worth linking those efforts to people and places elsewhere. The world is vast, but our attention can still move with care — one human moment at a time.

—Renee Roederer