Drowning in information and starving for knowledge

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine how the rapid growth of smartphones, high-speed mobile internet and social media has created an age of unprecedented information production and sharing, while simultaneously contributing to a paradoxical decline in meaningful knowledge and insight. By exploring the historical roots of information overload and its modern manifestations, the paper aims to analyze why increasing access to information does not necessarily lead to greater understanding and to identify the factors that contribute to this widening gap. Design/methodology/approach The methodology of the paper appears to be conceptual and literature-based. Findings The abundance of low-quality information amid information overload may offer short-term benefits; however, losing high-quality information raises the risk of huge losses in the long term. As high-quality information that is research-driven, intellectually rigorous, and produced through hard work gets buried under the debris of trivial content, and when valuable information is drowned out by the enormous amount of unverified content produced every day, the chaos we face becomes immense. Originality/value The value of the paper lies in its critical examination of the paradox between the exponential increase in information and the simultaneous decline in meaningful knowledge and insight.