Information overload (also known as
infobesity or
infoxication) refers to the difficulty a person can have understanding an issue and
making decisions that can be caused by the presence of too much information. The term is popularized by
Alvin Toffler in his bestselling 1970 book
Future Shock, but is mentioned in a 1964 book by
Bertram Gross,
The Managing of Organizations. Speier et al. (1999) stated:
Information overload occurs when the amount of input to a system exceeds its processing capacity. Decision makers have fairly limited cognitive processing capacity. Consequently, when information overload occurs, it is likely that a reduction in decision quality will occur.