The Case for Slow Consumption

It sometimes feels like a quiet moment is a moment wasted. I’ll notice the silence while I’m sitting on the bus or folding laundry and I’ll turn on a podcast soon after. My friends watch lectures on 2x speed and turn on Netflix while doing homework. I often do assigned readings an hour before class, so I only have time to skim them before the thoughts are lost to the next assignment.

Social media enables an unprecedented volume of content at our fingertips, going beyond its predecessors — the printing press, newspapers, radio, television — which were already criticized for their damaging effects on American culture and democracy. Today’s media contains magnitudes more content in every shape and size. More than 400 hours of video are published to YouTube every minute. Podcasts discuss topics from frog facts to the constitution, and YouTube videos teach skills from high school chemistry to songwriting. Arguably, technological media innovation enables greater access to information and more opportunities for learning and dialogue.

However, modern readers often experience the opposite — they’re overwhelmed, fatigued, and distracted. We’re reaching information overload, and conversely, content creators are facing an oversaturated landscape. Most Twitter trending topics last for less than an hour, and influencers and celebrities know that any hate or fame they receive is short lived. In many ways, more actually isn’t better.

Take the news as an example. The New York Times publishes around 230 pieces of content daily, and writers can produce as many as five articles in a day. Not only is it harder to produce higher volumes of quality journalism, but articles are likely to be glossed over unless they trigger an emotional reaction or otherwise go “viral”. It’s a mutually damaging relationship: Readers have less time to digest, so writers spend less time writing, and writers focus on writing things that capture attention, so readers scroll through their feed mindlessly until something catches their attention.

This leads to a reactive digital culture, especially when sharing media. In 2020, Twitter began prompting users to read an article before retweeting it, which reportedly increased article reading by 33 percent three months later. However, they haven’t reported any updated statistics since 2020. One 2016 study finds that 59 percent of links on Twitter aren’t clicked on before they’re shared.

It’s not just Twitter — TikTok, Reddit, and other social media platforms seem designed to display public perception as much as the content itself. After watching a YouTube video or Tiktok, I almost always read the comments to gauge the general sentiment, often before I’ve formed my own opinions. Similarly, many Reddit forums cultivate a group mindset where an entire subreddit holds shared opinions. Users who approach these subreddits as passive readers will often simply accept the mainstream view, while active posters will usually contribute well-accepted opinions to garner upvotes.

Instead of passively accepting content served to us, we as consumers must be intentional about what media we consume and how we consume it.

Cal Newport writes extensively about intentional consumption in a cluttered and distracted world in his books, Digital Minimalism and Deep Work. In Digital Minimalism, he details the ideology of a digital minimalist as a person who continually analyzes digital tools and aggressively eliminates whatever doesn’t align with personal values. In Deep Work, he defines a distraction-free, mentally strenuous thinking state in which you produce more creative or original thoughts. Combining these two ideas, we can reclaim control over our relationship to media and generate more independent thoughts by choosing which media we consume and reading them in a mentally straining way — that is, not skimming or simply accepting someone else’s opinion.

Quiet is an underrated treasure in a digitally cluttered world. Listening, not posting, is an increasingly rare skill. We’re urged to respond quickly by an unrelenting global conversation, but we often end up repeating sentiments we’ve read online or accepting thoughts because “everyone thinks so” without ever reconsidering.

Preserving solitude for deep thinking after reading is just as important as the reading itself, especially if we’re to empathize and be in dialogue with others, not just react.

The daunting reality of social and political polarization, and the resulting societal harm, comes down to a lack of understanding. Slower media consumption won’t magically address every issue, but it’ll help people build empathy in a time when social media feeds us dehumanizing narratives. Behind every photo, post, article, podcast is a person and often a story of many, many more people that deserves our listening.

Once you take time to consider what you’re consuming, you might find sympathy for people you wouldn’t have expected to. You might find joy in a slower, more intentional lifestyle not constantly inundated with information. You might find that you have less to say, and that’s not a bad thing. You might be inspired to create something of your own, and enter into a more thoughtful conversation with real people behind the online usernames.

Elizabeth S. Ling ’23 is a Computer Science concentrator in Eliot House. Her column, “Alone Together,” appears on alternating Fridays.