Maybe There’s Better Information Out There

This is starting to feel like a chore

The thought came to me while I was looking for something good to watch on YouTube.

The latest information. Better information. Information that fits me perfectly. I browse the options, watch something that catches my eye, then go looking for something else.

“Wait. This is just like being hooked on social media.”

I don’t endlessly scroll through social media feeds. When I briefly used X and Instagram a while back, they felt like a trap, so I decided to step away. (They seem even more of a trap now than back when Twitter was still Twitter.)

I hadn’t realized that YouTube was essentially the same thing. Maybe it’s because videos contain more information, or maybe it’s something else, but browsing YouTube feels like looking for something substantial. Compared with the countless little posts flowing through a social media feed, each video takes more effort to make. There are plenty of interesting videos that make me think, “I can’t believe I get to watch this for free.”

But plenty are disappointing, too. People have different tastes and interests, so even if something looks good, I won’t know whether it’s interesting to me until I watch it. Often, the thumbnail and title don’t match what the person is actually presenting. Money being involved has its upsides and downsides.

I think I’m choosing for myself, yet I never finish choosing. I think I’m doing this of my own free will, but it feels as though I’m being steered, and it’s tiring. It reminded me of that same uneasy feeling I’d had about social media.

“Right, maybe I should try one of those dopamine detoxes everyone’s talking about. I’ll look up some dopamine detox videos and take a break from digital life.”

“Except I’m not exactly addicted to my phone.”

“And I need this stuff for work. I can’t do anything too extreme.”

“If it’s not doing that much harm, what’s wrong with watching a few crappy videos?”

“Just watch in moderation.”

“That’s the part I’m having trouble with.”

Eventually, even thinking about all this became a chore. Then something occurred to me: “Maybe it would be quicker to just try doing the thing.”

Whether it was work, creative projects, or everyday life, I decided to start doing things before thinking too much about them. And it’s been surprisingly fine. In fact, I get more done that way, and it feels easier.

Lately, I’ve been coming across discussions of internet fatigue and people stepping back from AI, so I suspect I’m not alone in thinking about this. If more people start feeling tired and wanting some distance, how will services that keep offering us one recommendation after another change? I decided to look into it a little, with my own experience in mind.

Hope and despair in a bookstore

Sometimes, in a bookstore, I step back and look at all the shelves. There’s more information than I could read in a lifetime, just sitting there within easy reach. It gives me a feeling somewhere between hope and despair.

There might be an extraordinary discovery waiting among those books. Somewhere, there might be a book that answers a question I’m struggling with, or changes the way I see things.

But I won’t know until I read it. And since I can’t read everything, most of those books will remain strangers to me.

The mass of information online has something similar about it. In a bookstore, I can at least reach the end of a row of shelves. On a screen, the next option keeps appearing. The hope continues: perhaps I’ll find it if I look just a little longer.

Something that seemed close to this feeling was the writer Oliver Burkeman’s suggestion that we think of unread books and articles as a river. Treat the information you want to read as a river rather than a pile. You only need to pick a few things out as they flow past. That’s roughly the idea.^[1]

Even if I could narrow things down to only what I really wanted to read—and whether I’d actually managed that is another question—I suspect there would still be too much to get through. The problem feels less like being surrounded by worthless information and more like being surrounded by things that might be good. Simply filtering out the unwanted stuff won’t solve it. Beyond that, there’s still more information than I can choose from.

Was reassurance what I wanted?

What was I looking for? What did I hope to get out of it?

Thinking about it, the desire to simply enjoy myself wasn’t all that strong. Would this be useful in my life? Would it have some positive effect? I think I was weighing everything up in terms of what I stood to gain.

There might be a better way of doing things. There might be something useful I don’t know about yet. Somewhere, there might be a piece of information that makes me think, “This is it.”

At first, there’s the hope of finding it. But as I keep looking without finding anything, that hope fades. Even then, it feels like a shame to stop without a result. Something might turn up if I look a little longer.

Still, searching blindly rarely gets me very far. Often, I hadn’t even worked out what I needed to find before I could stop. If I’m looking for a way to solve a specific problem, I can try it and see whether it helps. But when I’m vaguely looking for “something that will make things better,” whatever I find seems to leave open the possibility of something more.

Somewhere, there’s a kind of magic method, and once I discover it, everything will start going well. I wasn’t thinking in quite such explicit terms, but perhaps a little of that hope was there.

For me, “I want good information” and “I don’t want to miss out” seem to overlap quite a bit. More than wanting to learn something, I want to make sure that not knowing isn’t costing me. I want to feel that I’ve gained something in return for the time I’ve spent.

Seen that way, it makes sense that searching gets tiring. On top of the pleasure of finding something good, I’ve taken on the job of checking whether I’m overlooking anything.

The idea of moderation

There was already plenty of discussion out there about finding some distance from digital technology.

In a 2016 article, Cal Newport described the idea of “digital minimalism”: identifying the digital tools and habits that add value to your life, and deliberately cutting back on those that don’t.^[2]

The phrase “digital detox” makes me picture something a little extreme, like throwing away my computer and phone and heading for the mountains. So is digital minimalism the gentler, everything-in-moderation version? Not quite. Research on digital detox includes both abstinence and reduced use, and the two terms don’t fall into neatly separate categories.^[3]

One study compared giving up smartphones completely with cutting back a little.

In the 2022 German study, 619 people were randomly assigned to one of three groups: no smartphone use for a week, one hour less use per day, or no change in use. Both abstinence and reduction were associated with improvements in life satisfaction and other measures, with the improvements in the reduction group proving more stable over time.^[4]

That doesn’t mean the same applies to everyone. It was one study using self-reported data, and a 2024 analysis combining ten studies found no statistically significant effects on measures including life satisfaction and stress. It doesn’t seem as simple as saying that cutting back will always make us feel better.^[3]

But beyond these experiments, are more people actually stepping away from digital technology?

In a survey published in 2026 by Ofcom, the UK communications regulator, 67 percent of adults who use the internet said they sometimes spent too long on their devices. Meanwhile, 89 percent of adult internet users used social media.^[5]

It’s a British survey, but the results sound fairly familiar to me here in Japan. People worry that they’re using these things too much, but keep using them anyway. We’re always hearing about people “moving away from” one thing or another, but for now, it doesn’t look as though digital technology is about to join that list. Work, communication, research, and entertainment all live on the same device. Separating out only the parts that tire us may be harder than it sounds.

Would better recommendations solve it?

What about the people providing these services? Are they doing anything about digital fatigue?

My vague impression is that services built around keeping us watching put business first, with what users really want coming second. (Assuming we even know what we really want.)

But according to YouTube’s own explanation, its recommendation system looks at more than watch time. Through surveys and other signals, it also tries to measure whether viewers were satisfied with a video and felt it was worth watching.^[6]

So if AI recommendations became more accurate—perhaps drawing on something like the Big Five personality model—and gave each of us videos better suited to our tastes, would we stop feeling tired?

It might take less effort to find things. But if good videos keep appearing, we could still keep watching indefinitely.

Besides, “I’m glad I watched that video” feels a little different from “I’m glad I spent that time on YouTube today.” Looking at the day as a whole, I might have been more satisfied doing something else.

Even if a service takes satisfaction into account, that doesn’t mean its priorities line up with my life as a whole. That seems to be part of the difficulty.

If more users start feeling this kind of fatigue, and it begins to affect how they use these services and how much revenue the services earn, there could be responses beyond more accurate recommendations. They might offer fewer suggestions, or create a stopping point: “That’s enough for today.” Selection could also be left to professional editors, influencers, paid services, or AI.

Finding lots of options while reaching your goal with very little effort: doing both is difficult with today’s technology. Though I suspect that, eventually, this too will be worked out.

In the end, I’m still the one making the decision. If I look at a shortlist and start searching for alternatives because I wonder, “Is this really the best choice?”, I’m right back where I started.

Maybe “now” is enough for now

At the beginning, I mentioned deliberately staying away from X and Instagram. Even before that, my usage barely counted compared with that of regular users. Yet when I stopped looking, I felt a sense of freedom. Even that small amount must have been a burden for me. At the time, I had a strong feeling that carrying on wouldn’t be good.

I only cut back on searching for information before work and creative projects because I was fed up with it, but I’m feeling that same sense of freedom now.

Just get on with it. Try more things. Don’t plan too far ahead in too much detail. Once I actually try something, what I want to know next becomes more specific. These days, I feel there’s almost no need to keep searching for the perfect method before I start.

There’s an old Japanese saying: giving birth is easier than worrying about it. In other words, doing something often turns out to be easier than all the worrying beforehand. Apparently, the answer has been around for a very long time.

Even when I do research, I keep the effort I put into selecting information to a minimum. Watching AI improve has made me think I should let it handle what it can. And rather than hunting for shortcuts online, I can go to primary sources and read books that seem relevant. That much is often enough. I’ve come to feel that the ocean of information online contains less of what I’m looking for than I once imagined.

The worrying part is that, if I start thinking, “I’ll become a better person by consuming less information,” I could end up searching for the best way to do that, too. Even my distance from digital technology becomes another thing to improve. Well, that feels more like a question of my own choices than digital fatigue, so I’ll leave it alone for now.

When I look at the shelves in a bookstore, I still think there might be a good book waiting somewhere. The possibility remains that a book I never encounter contains words I need to hear right now.

But I’ll probably never reach the day when I’ve finished checking.

For now, I can choose one book and read it. If another question comes up along the way, I can look again. I’d like to find that sort of distance from information online, too.

Notes