information overload

Popularized by Alvin Toffler in Future Shock (1970).

information overload (uncountable)

1. The inability to process everything one hears and sees; the availability or supply of too much information, or a state of stress which results.

   Synonyms: infobesity, infoglut, infoxication

   • 1970, Alvin Toffler, Future Shock, New York: Random House, →ISBN, page 314:

     One of the men who has pioneered in information studies, Dr. James G. Miller, director of the Mental Health Research Institute at the University of Michigan, states flatly that “Glutting a person with more information than he can process may . . . lead to disturbance.” He suggests, in fact, that information overload may be related to various forms of mental illness.

   • 1990 March 9, Richard Zoglin, “The Tuned-out Generation”, in Time:

     Some news executives attribute this youthful apathy to information overload and the explosion of media options.

   • 2006, Brian Fagan, “The Next 50 Years”, in Archaeology, vol. 59:5:

     But it's often hard to discern the forest for the archaeological trees, partly because archaeology is now so specialized, and also because all of us suffer from information overload about the past dumped on us by the Web, newspapers, TV specials, and all the apparatus of modern global communications.