Info Dump from the New Encyclopedia (a.k.a. Reels): Deep Dives turned into Fast Food

We all must have studied how centuries ago people would travel large distances just to get a piece of information about something they were curious about. Either by spending time in libraries or by learning under the guidance of a scholar, they were somehow able to gain knowledge, to become well-learned. 

Nowadays, however, we have access to all kinds of information.  Thanks to the ever-advancing technology. Either everything we need to know is just a click away or is already floating on our screens, trying to grab our attention. Does compressing in-depth information into a fast-food-like snippet genuinely help us?

It probably does help us when we don't stop there but take it as a cue for exploring further. If, however, we feel suddenly enlightened or well-informed by the new piece of information, in that very moment and don't consider looking past it or realizing that we may need to know more about this, we are perhaps only letting the feed decide what we know. 

When was the last time you saw something online and thought over it, analyzed it critically, or at least looked out for the source? Did you try to look at it from a different lens? 

How informative is an informative reel, really?

We humans are not free from biases, and, as a result, we seek information that already confirms our beliefs while neglecting any that doesn't. This is called confirmation bias in psychology. Don't our social media feeds, especially the reels, work the same way? Whatever we engage with or react to keeps coming back, confining us to our safe space where our beliefs are hardly rejected or challenged. 

Our existing beliefs keep on getting reinforced while any contradictory information, which might require analysis or further reading, is pushed away from our sight. As a result of consuming content from these short-form reels, which come from the lens of a hundred other people who already share our beliefs, we may become more rigid and critical of any other viewpoint without even noticing it, and without really analyzing it ourselves. 

It gives us a false sense of knowledge and awareness, making us emotionally driven to fight for our stance and engaging in further dissent and debate while leaving little room for genuine discussion and dialogue. As a result, we also leave little space for the other person to practice and own their views without making them feel vulnerable to our criticism. 

Occasionally, we also find content that either elicits a "shock and awe" reaction from us or "rage-baits" us and triggers our outrage, exploiting us emotionally and only requiring our reaction to help fuel it further and move past the algorithm.  

Moreover, the information online or anything that we hear from another person online is often presented to us in a certain way, and each presentation elicits a different reaction and thought process in us, causing us to process the entire message in a certain way. 

Consider this: 

• Reel A (Calm music, cozy bedroom): "Waking up at 5:00 AM gives you quiet time for yourself before the chaotic world wakes up."

• Reel B (Intense beat, person sweating): "If you aren’t up by 5:00 AM, you are falling behind all those who are already awake and out-hustling you." 

Both reels describe the exact same action, which is waking up early. Reel A frames it as self-care, leaving us feeling peaceful and inspired, while Reel B frames it as survival and FOMO, leaving us feeling anxious, guilty, and inadequate. A hook that can grab our attention and keep us engaged until the end, while also making a reel go viral, is also part of how the algorithm works. 

While sometimes we may be exploited by online misinformation or become a victim to someone's intentions to influence us in a certain way that we may not like, oftentimes, we would also find a person genuinely spending their time and effort to create content and educate us. Keeping pace with the changing algorithm isn't a bad thing but a necessity for even genuine content creators who truly wish to influence people. However, our own awareness, open-mindedness, and curiosity for exploration are more relevant and influence how we take in whatever we are exposed to, whether misinformation or genuine truth.

Besides, content creators themselves often feel pressured to act a certain way when it comes to posting the content. They are often torn between communicating their true voices or thoughts to the masses and keeping pace and sticking to the algorithm. This impacts how they present the information and how it reaches us. 

Short-form content can sometimes be genuinely useful when it teaches us a hack, makes us laugh for a moment, prompts us about something we can go deeper into, or equips us with a piece of news or information that probably doesn't need much further exploration. However, more often than not, in-depth knowledge from our own understanding and reasoning may be required more to form an opinion around a specific idea that an informative reel presents to us. 

While learning from others can sometimes prove useful when getting acquainted with an idea or even exploring it further, it may also cause harm when it's not accompanied by self-guided exploration and learning. This would lead us to form opinions centered only around what idea or thought appeals to us superficially, how it's presented to us, or who presents it to us. In order for us to perceive the world differently, we need our own lens instead of seeing it through someone else's. 

An impaired attention span

The most debilitating impact is on our attention spans, which somewhat reinforces us to keep watching the fast-food-like reels repeatedly. Add the new update, which allows us to switch to a 2X speed on an already short clip, and it gets even worse. If we could already watch a clip on normal speed without an issue, why the urgency? Perhaps because it keeps us coming back to these shortened snippets of information that we find on Reels instead of making us actually open a book to feed our curiosity or at least watch a long video on YouTube that covers the thing better. 

So even if a curious thought is somehow triggered by the clip, it is also killed the very next moment so that we don't have to sit for long, reading long paragraphs. 

So, the question perhaps isn't whether reels can inform us. They probably can in their limited and hurried manner, but the harm gets us when we mistake a fast food like reel for a full-fledged meal. What matters, therefore, is what we do after the 1 min video ends and whether that curiosity after is actually carried somewhere more fruitful or gets swiped away by the next one before it gets a chance to matter to us. 

The real cost for us is that we're mistaking the bite for the banquet and calling it full.