You have an addiction and its probably the reason you will read this article

I recently became aware that I suffer from an addiction.

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I have an addiction to information… and I don’t think I am alone.

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As human beings, we are wired for what cognitive scientists call Relevance Realisation. This is the process by which we discern what is important out of all of the data we are confronted with second by second.

Did you know that our brains process approximately 11 Million bits of information every second that’s 11 Mbps, yet our conscious awareness can only process around 400 of those bits (0.0036%)!

Your brain has evolved a highly effective mechanism for sorting through the data and finding what is relevant (salient) and pushing that up to your conscious awareness for you to act on. This ability has enabled us as a species to survive and even thrive by directing our attention towards patterns, opportunities and most importantly, threats.

This incredible process however, has been disrupted, thanks to an abundance of information.

There is a lot of interest in smartphone and technology addiction and many differing opinions to counter the negative symptoms. I would argue however, that its not the device we are addicted to, it’s the information itself!

We are addicted to seeking information and it is causing a collapse in our ability to connect the information to meaning and take action.

At the core of addiction lies our brain's machinery that drives curiosity and exploration. Dopamine, the neurotransmitter involved in reward seeking and motivation, plays a key role in this process. When we encounter new or salient information, dopamine signals its relevance and encourages us to engage and explore further.

This is part of the reason why learning something new feels inherently rewarding. Our ancient brain mechanism that was designed to help us gather information, learn from it and develop and stay safe is being tapped into.

Today in 2024, the sheer accessibility of information combined with its seemingly infinite novelty, has turned our relevance realisation into a maladaptive loop. The act of seeking information which used to be so that we could connect it to meaning , now becomes a self-perpetuating cycle of reward seeking behaviour with no or limited meaning.

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Why do I use the word addiction?

Addiction is fundamentally a disruption of agency (your sense of being in control). It becomes an addiction when it traps you in a cycle of behaviour where the immediate gratification overcomes the long-term well being.

Miriam Webster dictionary defines addiction as:

a compulsive, chronic, physiological or psychological need for a habit-forming substance, behavior, or activity having harmful physical, psychological, or social effects and typically causing well-defined symptoms.

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In the case of information addiction, we see a similar dynamic. The endless pursuit of novelty, whether through smartphones, news feeds, or even intellectual rabbit holes, prevents us from engaging in the reflective practices necessary for meaning-making.

This addiction intensifies what John Vervaeke has called the meaning crisis, the disconnection many people feel from purpose, community, and insight.

Information should empower us to navigate the world, but instead, its over abundance fragments our attention and leaves us feeling overwhelmed and unable to prioritise or move forward.

Relevance becomes separated from reality, as the pursuit of new data overrides the pursuit of wisdom.

Plato famously said “knowledge becomes evil if the aim be not virtuous”

I wonder what he would have thought if he perceived a world where knowledge didn’t even have an aim, it was just abundant useless information?…

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Smartphones and other tools are not the root cause but the amplifiers of the deeper issue. Our evolutionary machinery for seeking relevance was never designed to handle the scale, speed, and saturation of information we are faced with in the modern world. This creates what cognitive scientists call a combinatorial explosion—too many possibilities, too much complexity, and no clear way to prioritise.

As a result, we fall into shallow engagement, continuously chasing the next piece of novel information without integrating it into a coherent framework of understanding.

The philosopher Soren Kierkegaard described this as

"despair of the infinite"

The state of being lost in possibility without commitment or connection.

Information addiction traps us in this despair, reducing our capacity for insight, wisdom, and transformative growth.

The figures on data increases globally are incredible and hard to grasp.

Did you know that in 1970’s the average supermarket offered just under 9000 products. Now there are over 50,000! And you have to choose which of 100’s of types of coffee you want in order to have the energy to make the rest of the choices in your shopping trip.

No wonder supermarket deliveries are on the rise, people just don’t want to walk the aisles to face the cognitive overload.

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There is a solution

The way out of this addiction lies in cultivating an ecology of practices, rituals, habits, and building communities that help us realign information with relevance and meaning. This requires more than self-control; it requires re-engineering our relationship with information and with ourselves.

1. Mindfulness and Attention - Practices like mindfulness meditation can train us to observe the compulsive pull of information seeking and begin to understand our default patterns. It is important to do this practice without judgement of thinking “I shouldn’t think that, why am I thinking that, what is wrong with me?”
2. Reflection and Integration - We must learn to slow down and engage more deeply with the information we consume. Reflection transforms raw data into knowledge, and knowledge into wisdom. Read books rather than short summaries. Watch full length podcasts rather than convincing yourself that you are “micro learning”. Just this week i saw Andrew Huberman post about releasing shorter 30 min episodes due to the increased appetite for short bursts of information. I get that it helps him get his message to more people which is a good thing, but i also feel like we should be careful in enabling addiction.
3. Conversation Practices - Engaging in meaningful dialogue with others helps contextualise information and ground it in shared human experience. This counters the isolating effects of compulsive information seeking. If you learn something new, share it. If its not able to be shared, perhaps it falls into the useless information category.
4. A Return to Embodiment - Information addiction keeps us trapped in abstract, disembodied engagement with data and thought. Physical practices like movement, art, or hands-on learning reconnect us to the physical world and our embodied cognition, allowing us to bring relevance to the information.
5. Relevance Training - Just as we train our bodies, we can train our cognitive systems to better discern relevance. This involves consciously choosing what to engage with and developing the meta-cognitive skills to recognise when we are falling into compulsive patterns. The stoics called this Prosoche, the practice of paying attention to one’s thoughts and actions which leads to Prokopton, making progress.

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From addiction to insight

To overcome this addiction, we must reframe how we understand and approach information. The problem is not information itself but rather, its our disconnection from the processes that give information meaning.

By cultivating practices that foster reflection, connection, and wisdom, we can reclaim our capacity for relevance realisation.

This isn’t just an individual challenge but also a cultural one. We live in a world that prioritises quantity over quality, speed over depth, and distraction over attention.

If we are to overcome the addiction to information, we must rebuild the systems that support the cultivation of meaning. If we achieve this, we can transform information from a source of despair into a tool for flourishing.

I love information.

But underlying that, I love what information allows us to do. To live better, more connected lives, to help each other, to share lessons and experiences in order to become more whole as communities and achieve our individual purposes.

Stay curious.... but connect it to meaning!

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Mark