Media Snacking

by Carolyn Kiser

I am a snacker. Not one to eat a big meal, I eat about 5-6 mini-meals or snacks a day. I also love to graze – pick at a bowl of nuts or take a bite of a cupcake (never the whole thing). In fact, I rarely ever finish what is on my plate. Not necessarily because I get full or give myself too large a portion, but because I am bored with a piece of chicken or bowl of pasta by the time I am halfway through. That’s why I am a big fan of tapas.

But this blog is not about my personal relationship with food – his is about our society being full of snackers. And again, I am not talking about food snacking. I am referring to how people consume information and media. With thousands of blog posts (including this one), tweets, photo comments, headlines, news feeds, etc., ask yourself this: how often do you read the whole article? We may start to read an article from our custom news feed, get partly through it and then jump to twitter or read a newsletter just landed in our inbox.

I am not suggesting whether this is good or bad, merely pointing out the fact that most of us prefer a snack to a five-course meal. Sure, we may not get as satisfied as we would have had we indulged in the entire article, but we do get a chance to sample a variety of perspectives and information. So for a society of snackers, can you fit your message into 140 characters or less? If not, you may lose most of us who have moved on to the next tweet, post, status update, news feed, text, or email.