When you see that consuming content becomes your life - 2 reasons & 5 questions you need to know today!

India used to consume about 40,000 petabytes of data in the year 2010. It's expected to reach 2.3 million petabytes by the year 2020. This data is as per a report by Cushman and Wakefield. 

A 500x growth in data consumption within a decade!

An average Indian consumes about 11 GB of data per month.

Video contributes to about 65% of this.

The remaining 35% comes from other forms of content.

Social media has video content primarily, which, gets a daily watch time of about 67 minutes.

What does all this mean? 

It's plain and simple. We have become Content Consumers of first grade.

In the past to gather relevant information about a topic, it meant research in libraries, consultations and in-person meetings with experts.

In the present, all you would need is a mobile or an internet-connected device. With some creative and deep Googling, you would be able to get a bunch of perspectives and various forms of content to help you understand the topic.

Effectively, a task worth many months is now worth just hours.

Right, so how is this making us, content consumers? 
We are getting what we need with less time and effort. 

Why would anyone want to consume more and more content?

The logic is simple - Our innate thirst for knowledge and more flexible time availability are the main reasons. 

1. Thirst for more - Known is a drop while the unknown is an ocean

A mathematical problem which gets solved has no mystery surrounding it. 
A student would then be more interested in solving similar problems. 
Each successful solution will become a motivation for solving future problems.

Similarly, on receiving desired information, the human mind would be more interested in exploring related content.

For example, you would like to know how to clean your spectacles effectively in 5 minutes. 
The primary aim here is to wash them in the least amount of effort and time.

You would then ideally set about watching videos on cleaning glasses. 
Despite getting the best hack within the first video, there would be more interesting ones. Eventually, you will end up seeing more videos. 

Hence, for a 5-minute task, you might have spent over 15 minutes on consuming content.

The thirst of finding the best possible solution to a problem will motivate you in consuming more content. Internet is a web and in our case, a knowledge web. 

With affordable internet packages, the only constraint for this thirst is the time you can spare.

2. Time gaps availability and social screen addiction

I remember those days when it took me just 5 minutes to reach my school by walk. My father used to commute to his office in 20 minutes. In these times, the conversation would typically be about sports, news, food, weather and problems in school or office. These were all face to face conversations with people travelling with you.

A typical Indian student now travels for at least 1.5 hours a day to reach the school or college. An office-goer has over 2 hours a day allocated just for travel. Exploding real estate prices and traffic is the main reason for this. Another factor is how the brand consciousness is driving people to stay, work and learn from far off.

Along with the above, new avenues exist now which provide free-time to people. Dropping attention span has resulted in frequent 'power-breaks' in companies.

With such accumulated free-time, there is this natural inclination to consume content and learn or skim through. Also, the sub-conscious nag about the wasted Free Data does have some impact.

All these together result in social screen addiction. It is almost like a ripple effect.

Just imagine a guy entering into a metro rail. He sees that everyone is engrossed in watching mobile screens of varying sizes. What do you expect him to do next? He'll take out his mobile and get to checking and connecting with people via his screen. This kind of content consumption is due to social pressure and not due to inherent need.

So, what am I trying to convey with all this?  

So, what am I trying to convey with all this? That we are becoming content consuming addicts?

No!

The Internet is a blessing. 
Knowledge sharing is crucial for anyone's success. 
Read what you like and watch what you want to. Still, there should be a limit.

Such limits vary from person to person.

My point here is that consuming content shouldn't become your life. 

The content you consume should make your life easier. It should help achieve your dreams.

To know your limits ask yourself the below questions:

1. Am I going to use this information in my daily life?
2. Will this content help me gain something?
3. Will I be able to use this information for the benefit of my family, friends or colleagues?
4. Can I help someone with this information?
5. Will I be impacted if I do not know in depth about this?

If the answer to any one of the above questions is No, then skip consuming that content.

Instead, spend time on things and people that matter to you.