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By:

Prithvi Asthana

20 August 2025 at 5:20:30 pm

The Cost of Constant Consumption

As we curate our content, the deeper question is whether content is quietly curating us. Few can manage a 90-hour workweek, but most would easily go beyond a 90-hour social media week. With our growing appetite for social media and instant commerce, the real question is no longer just how we consume, but how much. In an age where every swipe, click and scroll is engineered to hold attention, overconsumption is becoming less a habit and more a way of life. What once felt private is now...

The Cost of Constant Consumption

As we curate our content, the deeper question is whether content is quietly curating us. Few can manage a 90-hour workweek, but most would easily go beyond a 90-hour social media week. With our growing appetite for social media and instant commerce, the real question is no longer just how we consume, but how much. In an age where every swipe, click and scroll is engineered to hold attention, overconsumption is becoming less a habit and more a way of life. What once felt private is now constantly translated into data, tracked, analysed and fed back to us as personalised content. Our chat topics increasingly shape what appears on our feeds, drawing us deeper into social media and blurring the line between private thought and public consumption. Shopping apps track our preferences and know exactly what to show us, when to show it, and how to keep us engaged. As we curate our content, is content curating us too? In India, this influence is amplified by scale: the country has over 820 million internet users, more than half from rural India. And because creating content now requires little more than a smartphone, production has exploded, feeding an endless supply of content to consume. We are no longer just seeking information online; we are constantly being served information we never asked for. The Attention Trap Urban youth face intense pressure to keep pace with the latest memes and trends, consuming more content in pursuit of social validation. For many, especially the young, staying updated has become a form of cultural currency — a way to belong, be seen and stay relevant. Across the world, users spend an average of more than two hours a day on social media, while reels lasting just 30 to 90 seconds are steadily reshaping attention spans. What begins as constant engagement online does not stay there. With everything at our fingertips, people are becoming less tolerant of delay, boredom and inconvenience. The speed of the internet is not just shrinking our attention spans — it is eroding our patience in everyday life. Convenience Culture Quick commerce platforms have turned this impatience into a business model. Ten-minute deliveries, constant offers and endless discounts encourage impulsive buying, from groceries to stationery, while quietly raising our expectations for speed. Convenience now drives not just what we buy but how we behave — leaving users less tolerant of delays and delivery workers under relentless pressure. A 2018 Pew Research Centre survey of 743 teens found that 31% lost focus in class while checking their phones. Increased internet use also disrupts sleep, as young adults scroll through reels late into the night, leaving many sleep-deprived. The endless scroll is designed to make stopping difficult, and reduced sleep worsens mood, irritability and concentration. Late Gen Z and Gen Alpha differ sharply from earlier generations. Raised on algorithms and personalised feeds, their worldview is shifting, while teachers increasingly struggle with shrinking attention spans and worsening classroom behaviour. Rising loneliness and excessive screen time have also blurred the line between online and offline life. As screen time rises, the warmth of community and unstructured human interaction is giving way to more mediated and transactional forms of connection. Algorithms & Intimacy Artificial intelligence has rapidly integrated into our routines, making tasks easier and more convenient. Large language models are trained on human interactions, and the more we use them, the more they adapt to our habits, perceptions and preferences — deepening their influence on our lives. As with social media, what feels intuitive or personalised is often the result of systems learning us faster than we realise. The more seamless these systems become, the easier it is to mistake convenience for connection and prediction for understanding. In the 21st century, data has become central to our existence. Social media and AI exploit our psychology, trapping attention in a cycle of constant content exchange. Sharing even small details updates our feeds almost instantly, sometimes making algorithms seem to understand us better than the people around us. Users remain deeply engaged in this digital world, often believing their content is curated just for them. In reality, companies profit from these interactions, growing richer while shaping consumer behaviour. What feels personal is, at scale, a business model designed to monetise attention. As digitisation rewires our brains and lifestyles, living offline has become increasingly difficult. New technologies promise convenience, but they are also reshaping how we consume content and experience the world. As we consume technology, the unsettling truth is that we may also be consuming ourselves.

Warriors of Night

Updated: Oct 22, 2024

We name our daughters Durga, Lakshmi and Saraswati; we worship the divine feminine power in the temples but oppress, repress and even attack the feminine power amidst us. That is the irony in the way India sees its women.

After the safety of the daylight fades, women are seen as easy prey by the predators of the night.

We mark the nine nights of Navratri, the festival of the goddess, by celebrating the dedication and valour of nine real-life women who brave the challenges of the night to pursue their dreams.


Part - 4


Never felt unsafe

The singer says there has been a generational change over the last two decades

Never felt unsafe

Work has no timings for Aisha Sayed. Sometimes, she begins her studio recording at 12 AM and finishes by 5 AM; at other times, concerts and live shows start at 9 AM and she’s done by midnight. In her field of work as a performer and singer, Sayed is used to not getting a night’s sleep and often returning home when most of the city is set to wake up. “I have been travelling at night but I have never, ever, felt unsafe in Mumbai,” says the singer-performer who began her career at the age of 13 years. Her father spotted her talent for music and took her to meet a sound engineer who was their neighbour in Bandra. The family helped her get opportunities and from there, her career began.

Being among the top contenders in Indian Idol, season 3, in 2007 catapulted her to fame and it opened up a world of new performance opportunities across the country. “I was just 20 years then and I was travelling the world, performing at the most lavish weddings, staying at the most luxurious hotels and performing at big corporate gigs,” she says. Safety, while on work, is has never been an issue for her for the organizers arrange a security detail for the performers. “They escort us until we reach the room. And since we travel with our team in a big group, there is always safety in numbers,” says Sayed, who sings in 10 languages. Her peers have faced instances of audience members being rowdy. “Once in Delhi, a group of drunk men followed my colleague to her room and kept banging on her door late into the night. But I have been fortunate,” she says.

Work assignments have taken to varied places, from the most luxurious international destinations to far-off venues in the hinterland of India where she’s travelled through dark, dense forested areas. “I have driven through areas where the only light is that of your car’s headlights. Turn around and you see pitch darkness,” says Sayed. She’s always got a little prayer on her lips when travelling through these remote areas for miles together. She recalls a show in Chattisgarh where she had to travel for nine hours at a stretch through remote and forested areas. “No place in our country is as safe as Mumbai,” she stresses. She would know, considering her extensive travels. She advises women to travel in groups while in places that are unfamiliar or unknown and never to venture out at night alone. “Keep your family informed of your whereabouts,” she says.

While her agreements state that proper security at all times, Sayed says that she drives her own car if she’s out at night for parties or personal work but insists that the people of Mumbai are largely helpful and cooperative. A rickshaw driver who once drove to home in the wee hours of the night, after a recording, waited at her gate until the watchman let her in. Friends and colleagues have dropped her home several times.

Mumbai, she feels, has changed—and it’s for the better, in the past two decades. “Earlier, on buses and trains, men would use the crowd as an excuse to touch women inappropriately. That has gone down. There is a generational change that I see,” says Sayed. She used to take the BEST buses and trains to her training classes and for recordings in the early days of her career.

Her timings are inconsistent and her shows take her to various cities and towns. But the Mumbai-bred girl emphasizes that her city is very safe for women, despite the various incidents of violence. “Mumbai is the only place where a woman can wear what she wants, wear bright red lipstick, leave her hair open and look glamorous and still be safe.”

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