I am a drug addict

Editor-in-chief of “Zuckerberg will call” on information addiction

The editor-in-chief of the publication “Zuckerberg Will Call” Konstantin Panfilov decided to talk about his main illness - information addiction, similar to drug addiction, when you check social networks and the media a hundred times a day and cannot stop. Panfilov admits that this is not normal, but, as you know, what doesn’t kill us makes us stronger.

Panfilov uses an external monitor to monitor Twitter

I have long wanted to admit to myself and the whole world: I am a drug addict. Informational. This means that I cannot live without daily information flows.

I noticed manifestations of this in myself back in childhood, when, instead of doing homework, I read an interesting book or magazine. By the way, about the magazines, I looked through them from cover to cover, including every advertising insert and a list of all the names of the editorial members.

Later all this got worse. Firstly, social networks appeared: new information about each of your acquaintances every second. Secondly, smartphones: new information about everything in the world and anywhere - at the dacha, in the subway, at the university.

When I wake up, the first thing I do is grab my iPhone, look through push notifications and look at Twitter - what if something happened? And if yes, something really happened, then I am overcome with a pleasant excitement, similar to the feeling that an experienced smoker experiences when lighting his first morning cigarette.

I found a job that suited my illness. A journalist has to bury himself in hundreds of sources from morning to night, and the moment when he finally needs to emerge from them brings only pain and irritation. But thanks to this kind of work, I can use my inclination for good, and I don’t have to take off my shirt to pay for the Internet.

Of course, family and friends suffer. It’s unclear how my girlfriend hasn’t left me yet and my parents haven’t turned their backs: they’ve told me more than once that my addiction is very dangerous and annoys them, but I continue to reach for my iPhone over and over again in every free moment. Suddenly something interesting happened.

How to deal with this? No way. It's incurable.

You can accept it. You can give up smartphones and the Internet forever, experience a little withdrawal and be free from illness, but remain forever cut off from the big world.

Information is now the most important resource, perhaps even more important than oil. And dependence on it can be used for your own purposes: daily “surfing” teaches you to weed out the unnecessary, put together the useful, check and refute - in general, everything that a real journalist should be able to do. And the one who will occupy the highest positions in the society of the near future.

Because the oil will run out, and there will only be more information.

Future tycoon
Konstantin Panfilov,
Especially for TJournal

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