Are we thinking too much? Or not enough?

I don’t think we want to think anymore. Or at least, I don’t think we want to think as deeply anymore. 

If you’re even the tiniest bit online, you will have noticed the growing tendency of global netizens starting to treat ideas and concepts as things to process quickly rather than sit with. 

When someone posts a long, thoughtful article online, people immediately respond with hot takes after only reading the headline or a short excerpt. Instead of sitting with the full argument and considering the context its based upon, they reduce it to a quick opinion, a meme, or a reactionary comment. Comment sections and replies are flooded with insults, emojis or pictures of LeBron. The idea gets processed quickly and pushed aside just as fast, rather than actually understood.

We’ve created a culture that boils down and resolves, rather than explores. Lumping things together under vague labels instead of examining them within the environment they’re created. Constantly pumping out new “methods” and “theories,” while ignoring nuance and complexity altogether. Our heads have been filled with fluff and filler words that have convinced us we’re progressing forward, when in reality, we’ve barely brushed the surface. 

This has resulted in a complete metamorphosis of what thinking is expected to do. It seems like it has become less about working through something, sinking your teeth into every minute detail until you truly understand it, and more about arriving at some theoretical finish line, preferably quickly and clearly. 

The value of thinking is placed on resolution rather than reflection. Over time, depth has almost started to feel excessive. The kind of thinking that takes time, that circles back on itself, that stays open a little longer than necessary, begins to feel less like the point and more like an unnecessary detour. 

But why? What changed?

It’s easy to point to attention spans, or the pace of information or social media, and leave it there. But that explanation feels incomplete to me. This bizarre shift in behaviour seems less about how quickly we consume ideas and more about how willing we are to stay with them. There is less patience for thoughts that take shape slowly and analysis that doesn’t immediately give way to a clear conclusion.

More and more, there seems to be growth in this popular expectation that things should make sense right away. If information is valuable or important, it should be easy to process, easy to explain and easy to move on from. If something resists this model — if it takes too much effort to unpack — it risks being brushed aside and neglected entirely. Not necessarily because it’s wrong, but because it feels like it isn’t worth the effort or energy needed to dissect it.

You can hear this in how often deeper engagement gets labelled as “overthinking.” It sounds harmless, almost helpful, but it does something more subtle. It draws a line. Up to this point, thinking is reasonable. Beyond that, it becomes excessive. Lingering too long, questioning too much, entertaining multiple interpretations, all of that starts to look less like curiosity and more like unnecessary complication.

There’s a social edge to this phenomenon. People who try to read into things, whether it’s a novel, a political argument or even a passing comment, often run into a kind of low-level resistance. A shrug. A joke. A “it’s not that deep.” It’s not always meant to shut things down, but it does. It suggests that looking further is somehow missing the point.

But what if the point is that there is more to look at?

Of course, there’s a reason this simplification has appeal. Staying at the surface is efficient. It lets you respond quickly: take a position and move on. Reflection is slower. It rarely gives you a neat answer right away. It often leaves you with more questions than you started with. In a culture that rewards decisiveness, that kind of open-endedness can sometimes feel impractical and inefficient.

The spaces where we spend most of our time thinking don’t help. Ideas circulate in compressed forms. The ones that spread are usually the ones that can be understood at a glance. Over time, that doesn’t just shape what gets said, it shapes how we think in the first place. Complexity becomes something to trim down before it ever has a chance to expand.

There’s also a broader pull towards absolute certainty. Clear positions feel more stable and defensible, while analysis tends to complicate that. It introduces doubt, exceptions, alternatives. It slows things down. And in a world that only seems to be getting faster and faster as the days pass, that’s a fate worse than death. With the internet at the tip of our fingers, there no longer seems to be a need for patience or delay. Instant gratification is king. 

Working through an idea used to involve a kind of friction. You had to sit with confusion, reread, make connections, revise your understanding. That friction wasn’t a flaw. It was part of how thinking actually happened. When that gets replaced by instant clarity, an imbalance between knowledge and intelligence begins to form. Understanding starts to feel like something you receive rather than something you build.

This is where the familiar idea that “the curtains are just blue” starts to feel less like a joke and more like a default. It used to push back against overanalysis. Now it sometimes shuts analysis down altogether. It suggests that meaning stops at what’s immediately visible, and looking further is unnecessary.

But most things we encounter aren’t that simple. Conversations have subtext and contain multitudes. Systems have layers. Even small details can carry more than they seem to at first glance. Engaging with that complexity isn’t about forcing meaning onto things. It’s about recognizing that meaning isn’t always obvious.

So why does it feel increasingly out of place to look for it?

Maybe it’s because doing so takes time, and time feels scarce these days. Maybe it’s because it introduces uncertainty, and uncertainty is uncomfortable. Or maybe it’s because the environments we think in don’t reward that kind of engagement anymore.

Whatever the reason, the effect is subtle but noticeable. Deep thinking hasn’t disappeared. It’s still there, in classrooms, in long conversations, in moments where people let themselves go a little further. But it feels less like the default and more like a choice. Something you have to opt into, sometimes against the grain.

And that raises another question. If thinking deeply starts to feel optional, how often will people choose it?

It is easier, in many ways, to take things as they appear. To accept the surface, to move on quickly, to avoid the complications that come with looking closer. Nothing explicitly stops deeper thinking from happening. It just stops being reinforced.

And over time, that might be enough.

Because if the pause disappears, if the habit of sitting with something a little longer fades, it’s not just individual thoughts that change. It’s the way we come to understand anything at all.