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Questions on social media (3)

In the first post of these series, I basically asked how people will choose what they read in the future. In the second post, I asked what will information will be available when they go looking.

Now I would like to ask: What will be an 18-year-old's motivation to read about a random status update from his or her's counterpart on the opposite side of the world?

 There is a ton of information out there these days. You can hardly avoid it when you log into your social media accounts, even after all the filtering and careful choosing of "friends". You might have logged on in search of something specific, but you tend to get distracted by the waterfall of everything else.

So, if this grows, what will motivate one to check on the waterfall at all? Will there be mechanisms to further customize one's content to their own tastes? Will we develop an interest in peer-to-peer learning that is complimentary to formal, productive, more industrial learning?

My gut tells me there is no formal, productive or industrial motivation to read randomly today, yet people do read randomly. We're further developing a taste for sensation and drama that is losing touch with what actually happens outside our houses and workplaces. If this continues, new worlds may be created. And when new worlds are created, then we might as well bounce to Mars tonight. 
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