In the age of social media, its very easy to share too much information. Whether its posting about the food you ate or other miscellaneous minutiae or just providing too much information about what you do, it’s easy to create a case of information overload. Information overload is too much information coming from too many sources. But its also more than that. Sometimes its having too much information in a blog post, or too much information in an article.
When I think about too much information, I think of it as a poor design decision on the part of the person sharing the information. The person hasn’t considered the amount of information his/her audience can handle or if the information is even at the level of the audience. But more than that s/he probably hasn’t broken it up into manageable chunks that a reader can process.
The subject also needs to be considered. If it’s non-fiction and on a technical subject, the information needs to be concise and to the point. Even if it’s not technical information, you need to consider that people rarely read non-fiction just for pleasure. They are usually trying to learn something from the information, but if it’s information overload than it’ll work against you.
My suggestion is to consider the medium in which the information will be presented, and then what level of detail you want to provide. The internet isn’t the place for a lengthy composition. People want to be able to skim over information quickly and get this gist, without having to read a lot. If it’s a book, on the other, you can go into more detail and explanation, but its still wise to break the writing up into chunks or smaller sections with a chapter.
Information overload can be avoided, if you’re willing to take the time to develop an understanding of what your audience can or can’t handle, as well as learning what the limitations of a given medium are.
