Five years after publishing Amusing Ourselves to Death, Neil Postman gave a speech to the German Informatics Society that elaborated on his concept of the “information-action ratio.” In the talk, titled “Informing Ourselves to Death,” Postman described how, for the average person in 1990, “information no longer has any relation to the solution of problems.” The way he described it could just as easily describe the average person in 2025:
The tie between information and action has been severed. Information is now a commodity that can be bought and sold, or used as a form of entertainment, or worn like a garment to enhance one’s status. It comes indiscriminately, directed at no one in particular, disconnected from usefulness; we are glutted with information, drowning in information, have no control over it, don’t know what to do with it. . . . Our defenses against information glut have broken down; our information immune system is inoperable. We don’t know how to filter it out; we don’t know how to reduce it; we don’t know how to use it.
Remember, Postman observed this “information glut” problem in the pre-internet era. How much more are we glutted with information today? If we didn’t have good “information immunity” defenses back then, we’re even worse off now—especially in the age of ChatGPT, deepfakes, political misinformation campaigns, and the resulting epistemological crisis. The information crisis we face is at least threefold: too much information that moves too fast and is algorithmically tailored to be too focused on ourselves.
In a sense, “being informed” is more of a liability than an asset in today’s world. The quality of digitally mediated information is simply too untrustworthy.
Common Side Effects of Being Overinformed
What happens to us when we’re overinformed but underactivated? From my experience and observations, some common side effects occur.
We become anxious. When a world’s worth of “breaking news” calamities, injustices, and apocalyptic headlines steadily feed our souls, we naturally feel anxious and on edge.
We become angry. Rising blood pressure and seething anger follow when we’re constantly exposed to partisan clickbait, triggering troll provocations, and other forms of foolish talk.
We become addicted. Algorithms easily figure out what types of information we can’t resist. Soon we’re scrolling and clicking like addicts, unable to resist the intoxicating allure of our favorite genres of “news,” trivia, or juicy gossip.
The information crisis we face is at least threefold: too much information that moves too fast and is algorithmically tailored to be too focused on ourselves.
We become numb. A diet of information disconnected from tangible action makes information abstract and surreal, disconnected from our real life. Eventually, headlines about a horrific mass shooting become things we scroll past as casually as we glance at a friend’s vacation photo.
We become lonely. When we spend large segments of our lives binging on digital information far removed from local, embodied communities—even if it’s information we debate or discuss with others online—we become lonelier. The online influencer we listen to or the interlocutor avatars we fiercely debate are hardly substitutes for the know-and-be-known community we really need.
We become delusional. Because of the algorithmic shape of information today, no two of us live in the same information universe. We all see things differently, in ways tweaked to please our preferences and biases. Naturally, this further entrenches us in echo chambers, deepening our confidence in our own rightness (however wrong we are).
We become detached from reality. The cumulative effect of all the above is that an overinformed life becomes a pseudo real life. When awareness trumps action and we’re more compelled by narratives than by reality, our sense of the world becomes ever more surreal.
Perhaps C. S. Lewis sums it up best in this letter to a friend, when he laments the dynamics of an information-action disconnect:
It is one of the evils of rapid diffusion of news that the sorrows of all the world come to us every morning. I think each village was meant to feel pity for its own sick and poor whom it can help and I doubt if it is the duty of any private person to fix his mind on ills which he cannot help. (This may even become an escape from the works of charity we really can do to those we know). A great many people do now seem to think that the mere state of being worried is in itself meritorious. I don’t think it is.
Not only is Lewis right to challenge the social merit attached to “the mere state of being worried” (i.e., the social capital of awareness), but he hits the nail on the head when he says we should avoid fixing our minds on problems we can’t solve. This not only burdens us in all the ways described above but tends to distract us from the local problems we can help fix.
Neglecting the Local
With all the energy we devote to keeping up with the goings-on of the world, we might neglect the people we can love and the problems we can address in our own backyards. For Christians called to love our neighbors and tangibly pursue mercy and justice, this is the crux of what’s wrong with an imbalanced information-action ratio.
Such is the state of our mass-mediated information environment that your average 21st-century young person can tell you far more about national politics than local politics. He develops strong opinions about presidential candidates and Supreme Court cases but couldn’t tell you the name of the mayor or a city council member in his city, nor identify the most pressing challenges facing his proximate community.
Such is the state of our mass-mediated information environment that your average 21st-century young person can tell you far more about national politics than local politics.
Of the millions of Gen Zers who posted a blank black square on Instagram in June 2020 (#blackouttuesday) to protest police brutality, how many have ever had a conversation with a police officer in their own neighborhood? Of the millions who changed their social media avatars to the Ukrainian flag in February 2022, how many have tangibly helped refugees or immigrants from war-torn nations in their own cities?
Online hashtag actions are well intentioned. And maybe the viral power of such “collective online action” makes some difference. But as Lewis points out, the danger is that such actions “become an escape from the works of charity we really can do to those we know.”
There are many reasons why everyone should strive for a more balanced information-action ratio. It’ll help your mental health and ground you in local life and embodied community. For Christians specifically, it’ll remind you of your creaturely limits and deepen your trust in a sovereign God who is omniaware in ways you can never be. And it’ll present more fruitful avenues for loving your neighbor and being a faithful witness in the particular place where God has situated you.