We live in the digital age. We receive, consume and digest enormous quantities of information, daily, if not hourly. Our generation's attention span is incredibly short - social media is a great example of this. We need concise, straight-to-the-point Information. We want things to be as brief as possible - no one reads through 1000-word articles anymore, tweets with a little over a hundred characters seem to be enough. Flashy images, 30- second videos, click bait titles - that's what the media has reduced itself to.
The consequences
This need for concise, easily-digestible content has satisfied our hunger for information, but it has also left a void -- there is no room for critical thought.
When was the last time you read an in-depth analysis of, for example, the socio-economic situation in your country? No one writes them anymore because no one has the time to read them. Short, flashy, "controversial" news stories work best.
This has redefined global media and, arguably, made it worse. While we may have access to a lot of information, we lack a fundamental understanding of what we read - we are informed, yet uneducated. We inform ourselves superficially and have the inherent tendency to seek out information that aligns with our preexisting beliefs and hypotheses.
Podcasts: The opposite of everything today's media is
While the trend of superficial, bombastic information keeps growing, there are exceptions with the biggest one being - podcasts.
They have marked the return of radio, albeit unconventional, and perhaps shifted the way we view media and ourselves altogether.
Most podcast hosts would agree that the 20 minutes is the ideal length of a single episode - this is how long the average commute in America. However, the average episode of the most popular podcasts nowadays, like The Joe Rogan Experience, for example, is a few hours long, at the very least.
Millions of people download them religiously. While some may argue that podcasts are just another fad, they are not yet going away, and they are a powerful indicator of what we are subconsciously craving - large pieces of high quality, specialized, in-depth content. We may not have the patience to read it, but it seems as if we have the patience to listen to it.
"Infotainment" is a term often used to describe the modern state media has found itself in and while the present doesn't look too bright, the future seems to be slightly brighter.
