Information Overload: Causes, Symptoms, Consequences and Solutions

Abstract

This paper looks at the concept of Information, over, load and information overload respectively, a brief history of how information overload came into existence. It also outlined some salient factors that are responsible for or causes information overload and they entail the followings as enshrined in the study: Multiple sources of information; the availability of too much information; the difficulty in managing information; the information's irrelevance or insignificance; The inability to comprehend the material due to a lack of time. Furthermore, massive amounts of fresh information are constantly being created on a daily basis; pressure to create and compete in the provision of knowledge, particularly in the academic setting. The lack of complexity and nascent simplicity of creating, duplicating, and sharing information online, leading to a quantity over quality effect in many institutions and businesses; the absence of complexity and nascent simplicity of creating, copying, and sharing information online; The exponential development of information delivery methods, such as radio, television, print media, websites, e-mail, mobile telephony, RSS feeds, and so on; the growing weight of historical data available to us; a plethora of inconsistent, contradicting, and simply wrong information; the lack of clear structure in groups of information and poor clues as to the relationships between those groups; the lack of simple procedures for quickly processing, comparing, and evaluating information sources; the lack of clear structure in groups of information and poor clues as to the relationships between those groups. The study pointed out some symptoms that can be seen as evidence or signs indicating that there is the presence of information overload thereafter, it brought out some consequences of information overload specifically to an individual and collectively to an organization. In this paper the researcher ended the work by outlining some remedies on how to combat information overload since it has become a matter that has come to stay.