Meaningless content and irrelevant information shared by those we follow on social media tires our brains and makes it difficult to focus. Thousands of app notifications, ads and questionable content that come every day put great pressure on our minds. Digital noise is a constant and disturbing problem that affects all of our lives today.
Just before I turned off notifications for certain applications, including those I used to share photos and short texts, shopping, and friendship applications that I downloaded and installed on my phone thinking they would be a cure for my loneliness, when I picked up my mobile phone and of course my tablet I would encounter notifications from dozens of different places on the screen, sometimes as many as fifty, and I would open some of them, sometimes delete them one by one, and sometimes all together.
Then, instead of trying to get rid of these notifications that came from all directions and were so numerous that I lost count, I decided not to receive them at all.
After watching videos uploaded to social media or browsing through short messages, I realized that when I turned off the screen, I asked myself, What did I just watch? I think you've probably asked yourself this question too.
Advertisements from applications that are forced to be downloaded to my phone in order to get some discounts, trending tweets marked with sparkling stars, a reminder message to watch a new story from a close friend of mine without missing it just because I sent them five or ten absurd videos, ten more videos from the same person, another group of messages sent by someone else from a business-oriented sharing platform, a new update e-mail from a store that I had to give in order to download a file, funny offers on my products from the application I sell second-hand products, discount news from the online marketplace that positions itself as my favorite store after I buy a few products were all on my screen throughout the day and things we cleaned off my screen by swiping sideways a lot; or things; until I turned off all notifications.
For a very long time, I have focused on shopping only if I need something, and it has been very useful for me to accept that I am tired of these notifications and content that, if I do not follow them constantly, eat up the capacity of both my phone and my memory.
I know that I am not the only one suffering from this, and this is a very important problem that we face both while living and working in the modern world, and they have defined it; digital noise.
So what exactly is this bombardment that constantly penetrates our lives and how does it affect our lives?
Digital noise: A common problem that affects us all in today’s digital world
Simply, digital noise is a distracting, logically meaningless, contextually unimportant, and increasingly overwhelming mass.
I can categorize the content that creates this noise very simply as follows;
- Click-bait headlines and articles
- Repetitive and meaningless challenge videos
- Unverified news status content
- Constant, persistent emails and marketing notifications
- Conspiracies and sensationalism about current situations, misinformation and anxiety-provoking messages
- Worthless content that the platforms’ algorithms present to us and produce to get interaction
The common feature of the content you encounter, whether visual, written or even audio, and which creates digital noise can be defined as not adding anything to the viewer, intellectually, emotionally or practically.
Why is there so much digital noise?
It would not be wrong to explain the main reason for the increase and spread of digital noise as the fact that everyone has the opportunity to create this noise with the developing technology.
Today, anyone can edit photos and videos, produce blog posts and easily share them with a mediocre mobile phone or tablet. Therefore, the concept of content producer is something that anyone who wants to can adopt without any effort. This spread in content production is the main factor that causes the quality of the content to be ignored and pushed to the background.
There is a misconception that you exist on social media as much as you are visible, and both those who produce content on social media and the brands that collaborate with them are struggling to attract your attention. The equation is simple: more attention, more money. The effort to attract attention brings with it more sensation, drama, polemics, simplicity, scandal and ultimately noise.
The algorithms of all popular social media platforms you use show you the ones that are likely to generate engagement, not the ones that are of high quality. What triggers engagement these days; feeling strong emotions like anger, surprise, or excitement. When engagement anxiety overrides quality content, useful information gets lost in the noise.
Why do people produce so much digital noise?
The source and target of digital noise are again humans. The main reason why this business is so popular is to make other people like the content, to receive comments on this content, to ensure that the viewer shares the content with their own circle. In other words, to be visible and to need approval.
The number of followers of social media accounts, the hearts (likes) left on posts, the comments made and the number of times these content is shared are the new currency of today. This triggers the pressure on people to remain visible and to feel part of a community, and people are constantly trying to create and share new content.
Perhaps what we need to accept is that we are afraid of missing out and falling behind in what is being talked about on social media. This is FOMO - the fear of missing out, and people try to produce content about what is trending at that moment in a relatively short time, and share it using relevant hashtags in order to stay visible.
On the other hand, it is important to remember that digital noise is a type of disinformation method. It is important to remember that some actors in social events intentionally create noise and ensure that the real and correct information about the subject is invisible. It is possible to think of this both commercially and ideologically. Its shape and size change instantly, depending on the situation.
You can see the best regional example of this, especially in major disasters that affect a certain area, such as earthquakes. After an earthquake in the city of Izmir in western Turkey, we frequently see that the hashtag #earthquake, which rose on Twitter, was filled with people and ads that were incompatible with the subject in various sizes.
Digital noise is produced, but it is also consumed, it has a buyer. Opening the screen of your mobile phone and logging in to social media whenever you find free time has become a social reflex, and as long as people exhibit this behavior, this unqualified content will continue to flow from social media to our screens.
Digital noise is useless and harmful.
It would be wrong to describe what the digital noise surrounding you creates simply as distraction. Being constantly exposed to superficial, meaningless, logically devoid of context, and information that does not encourage deep thinking and analysis dulls the most basic ability of a person, which is questioning behavior.
Unqualified information constantly tires the human brain, triggers anxiety by activating the decision-making mechanism.
You will understand better, especially if the last thing you do before going to bed at night or the first thing you do when you wake up in the morning is to dive into social media and social media content; you constantly feel tired, you constantly think about a video you saw, and maybe you get anxious and pessimistic about a false piece of information you heard from there that triggers your protective side against some people and objects that are valuable to you, and you spread this to other people around you, causing them to worry too.
Unfortunately, digital noise also fulfills its duty in suppressing the voices of real experts.
Whether you turn on the TV or do a simple search on social media about a certain topic, you will see a lot of people expressing their opinions on the subject without saying whether it is right or wrong. Unfortunately, what is popular today is that conspiracy theorists, pseudo-scientists and worse, people whose field of expertise is not exactly clear, consider it their right to make expert-level judgments about popular topics that are popular.
Echo chambers, where people who think like each other are virtually together, make it difficult for things we can socially agree on to come together on a common ground of reality. It would not be wrong to say that digital noise causes you to lose your sense of common reality, and the echo chamber is the most important thing that supports this.
When you enter an echo chamber, you are surrounded by people who think like you, and what people with different ideas say disappears. This can be considered a kind of digital noise.
The negative effects of digital noise on social media communication
It is clear that the nature of social media is focused on communication and interaction, but digital noise almost poisons this. Unfortunately, social media, which offers a very good opportunity in terms of bringing people together, has today been deformed and degenerated with factors such as superficiality, polarization, attempts to be right, lack of empathy, ignoring, the loss of originality and the return of work to performance.
Slogans and emojis have replaced dialogues, instead of creating bridges between themselves by communicating, people try to justify themselves and turn the other person into a caricature, hide behind screens and keyboards and try to impress the other person, humiliate, ignore or bully.
Is it possible to get rid of digital noise?
Closing your social media accounts completely and staying away from the digital world is not the only solution to get rid of digital noise. The solution to this is to improve your digital literacy and become a conscious digital citizen.
Reviewing who is on your social media feed is the first item on your to-do list. Mute or unfollow accounts that you think do not add value to you, make you feel tired, are aggressive, and only give links.
Do you want to re-share information you come across and spread it in your own circle? Think twice beforehand; is this information true, is it useful to me and the people around me, do I really need to share it?
As I mentioned at the beginning of the article, turning off the notifications, audio and visual alerts that are constantly coming and never ending is another useful tip that will come in handy when escaping from digital noise.
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I know you are in the information age, and digital noise has somehow entered your digital life. But it is also in your hands to control it. It is in your hands to separate meaningful content from meaningless content, and achieving this will both protect your own health and contribute to bringing the society you live in to a better place.
Digital noise may seem like an inevitable byproduct of the information age, but it is in our hands to take control. I know it has a relative definition, but you can still control your own emotional state and contribute to making the society you live in healthier by sorting out the meaningful and quality from the noise.
Your attention is one of the most valuable resources you have, and when and where you direct it is very important to be successful in your job, stable in your relationships, live a quality life, and keep the course of your life in balance.
If necessary, restrict, block, unfollow, or even log out of the medium; get rid of the noise, it will do you good.
All images are created by Imagen 3.
