Let’s face it: we live in a world full of information and knowledge. With the rise of the internet, this trend shows no sign of slowing down. In fact, if anything it only appears to be increasing.
Today’s kids are growing up in a world where they have access to more knowledge than any generation that came before them.
I’ve been noticing some concerns from parents who have young children that are trying to figure out how technology will shape their lives going forward. They seem worried about how much time their kids spend on devices looking at screens instead of reading books or playing outdoors with friends. They even have terms for this new phenomenon: ‘digital natives’ and ‘screenagers‘ to describe kids who have been born in the internet/smartphone age, and the associated issues that present.
In this digital age, it’s easy for us to learn new information at a very rapid pace. While it may be overwhelming, there are some important reasons why we should embrace this change instead of fighting against it. I’d like to highlight three major benefits below:
1) Learning is its own reward! It’s exciting to learn things because you enjoy learning, not necessarily because you want to apply what you’ve learned immediately. By doing this, your brain is excited by the challenge presented by acquiring new knowledge which can stimulate other areas of your brain that aren’t directly related to the subject matter (i.e.: something else will light up at the same time).
When you approach learning with this mindset, it turns into its own adventure! You can go down any path that your interests lead you. As long as you’re making progress and actually dedicating some time to it, then who cares if you’re reading about something that’s completely unrelated to your job or school! There is so much amazing information available nowadays that it’d be a shame not to explore it just because of preconceived notions about what will be useful or not. If nothing else, doing this kind of ‘happy’ learning will make sure that the necessary knowledge-based tasks are completed with less stress because they are part of an overall balanced lifestyle.
2) Knowledge is life-long – It’s not a race! You can ‘level up’ your brain’s capability to learn throughout life. It may take more effort later in life to acquire new information, but that doesn’t mean it’s impossible. Many people think if they haven’t learned something when they were 17 or 25 or even 35 years old, then they never will. This is completely false! There are many examples of people who have lived well into their 80s and 90s who still retain near-perfect recall for all sorts of things (e.g.: memories from 70 years ago).
The point is: you don’t need to feel burdened by the past and worry that you’ll be stuck in the same place forever because you’re ageing and getting older. What’s more, is that for all the time you spend stressing over what you haven’t learned in your life, you could instead be out there learning new things and then sharing them with other people. I think we’d all agree that it’s much better to be happy and healthy than stuck worrying about negative things!
3) Life is not a zero-sum game – When it comes to knowledge, even though there is a lot of information out there on any given subject matter, it doesn’t mean everyone knows everything. It’s exciting because it means there are opportunities everywhere for someone who wants to contribute their own piece of knowledge. Be the person who shares something new with others. This can be done through articles like this one which will get indexed by search engines, or through sharing on social media where others can read what you have to say. It may not always be easy, but it’s important to put yourself out there and make an effort to share your knowledge with other people.
Conclusion – We all benefit when we are learning new things because our overall happiness goes up! You can pick up anything that interests you at any time, which turns life into a long-term adventure of exploring new things instead of something that has a definite endpoint. Finally, even if you don’t know everything about a certain subject matter, chances are someone else doesn’t either so there is room for contribution from anyone. If everyone shares small pieces of information one at a time as they learn them, then we can all build on each other’s knowledge and progress as a society!
What are you waiting for? Go out there and discover something new today!