I want the world to have updated

Why do we keep looking at SNS? I suddenly wondered if there's a wish that the world has updated.

Gaps, boredom, idle time — I can't stand them.

During work, if there's a little pause, I somehow look at my phone and open Instagram.
Not because I especially want to see something — I just open it.
(※ Lately phone-shaped "just a board" products are selling like crazy to people who want digital detox — that tracks. Do they last? At first they probably give a vague sense of security, then become annoying just by existing, end up in a corner of the room collecting dust.)

Somehow, while I'm not looking at the phone, I want some update in the world — SNS included — and a desire to vaguely catch up with it.

Sometimes after a few hours of exercise or being out without the phone, I look at it and all kinds of information have updated.

Notifications from LINE, Chatwork, Slack; news; SNS. The world has updated.

As if possessed, I feel I have to catch up with that updated information.

Structurally I try to cut it: block unnecessary contact, actively leave LINE groups, turn off notifications — but there's a limit to blocking what still comes in.

I still end up wanting to know.

Emptiness about being left behind makes me expect that something new might have happened.

Why does falling behind on information get scary?
As trendy business keywords like Web3 or the metaverse claim, too many people spend too much time facing digital devices for work and private life — consciousness lives on the digital side — so being left behind on information starts to feel like being left behind yourself.

This is long past personal taste about being trend-sensitive. As long as you live in a community, controlling it is hard.

That said, I don't know my own "just-right amount of information" to take in.
And in the process of passively absorbing info, you do sometimes hit serendipitous useful info or fun entertainment — so you can't write it off as zero value.

If attention is a limited resource, you stop being able to spend it on what you actually want to focus on.

The other day I invited a friend to a meal; no reply for days, then: "My cert exam is coming up — I've been studying and haven't touched my phone for about a week!" I thought, simply, wow — what willpower, nice.

But after that they must have looked at X, because they shared a post about the then-hot (as of writing, 2024/08/31) topic: "Ren Hiramoto might be doping!"

Using this post's opening phrase: he also had that "I want the world to have updated" feeling, and right after phone unlock had to catch up on info.
(※ I've written about RIZIN a few times, but I've got questions about how RIZIN runs events, and as of writing I've mostly lost interest. So I couldn't reply with much heat.)

The problem is: when you meet someone who doesn't catch up on info, you might think "this person is ignorant — they don't even know this?"

A study-hungry engineer touches a new framework or scheme, proposes "let's try this" inside the company, and gets "we don't understand it so risk is high; the current scheme already achieves the goal" — that kind of scene too.

Comparing passively receiving the flood of mixed-quality SNS info with actively learning to grasp cutting-edge trends in a specialty isn't a very accurate comparison for practicality — but either way, staying bathed in information is such high cognitive load that for some people there's a limit to what cognition can take in.

Even for me as a combat-sports fan, just understanding the related tweets and flow around Hiramoto is a bit tiring.

Full digital detox seems almost impossible.
Still, living without any will to choose information makes cognitive load too strong to defend against.

I've written this far with no real proposal — but I think I have to choose for myself, and also that I shouldn't unconsciously evaluate someone negatively for not knowing something.