A significant number of Korean adults feel daily fatigue amid work, human relationships, and a flood of information, a survey has found. People in their 20s, in particular, reported difficulty managing their time and said their concentration is disrupted by the indiscriminate flood of information and notifications.
LG Uplus and Longblack, a knowledge subscription service, revealed these findings as they released the results of a survey titled "Is Your Life Simple?" conducted on 2,169 adult men and women from May 28 to June 7. According to the survey, 61.4% of respondents — six out of 10 — answered that "my life is complicated or very complicated." Of these, 28.5% said their lives were "very complicated."
The response that life is complicated was higher among younger age groups. Among those in their 20s, 70.2% felt their lives were complicated, followed by 67.3% of those in their 30s, 61.3% of those in their 40s, 54.7% of those in their 50s, and 31.6% of those in their 60s. The most-cited factor making life complicated was "work and tasks" at 56.8%. It was followed by "human relationships" at 49.1%, "digital information and media" at 35.4%, and "time management" at 31.5%.
People in their 20s felt the difficulty of time management most acutely. One respondent in their 20s said, "There is so much to do, but my attention is frequently scattered by various notifications and information." Another respondent said, "Trying to take care of studying, job preparation, and my personal life all at once, my priorities become blurred." Those in their 30s often felt confusion amid their diversified roles, including at work and at home. One respondent in their 30s confided, "Wanting to fulfill my roles both at work and at home feels selfish."
The explosion of information was also cited as a major factor making modern life complicated. The analysis suggests that, as digital content, social media, and various notifications pour in endlessly, the very task of sorting needed information from unnecessary information has become another source of fatigue. Those in their 50s tended to feel greater complexity in human relationships than in work and tasks. This is interpreted as the psychological burden from long-accumulated social ties and family and acquaintance relationships weighing more heavily than work pressure.
There were also clear differences by gender. Among men, 61.3% said they felt complexity in "work and tasks," higher than the 53.8% of women. By contrast, women led in "digital information and media" at 37.9% compared with 31.2% of men, and also differed in "goods and consumption," with 31.0% of women versus 24.2% of men. This suggests that the flood of content and advertising, along with endless consumption choices, is acting as a factor making women's daily lives heavier.
Respondents' idea of a "simple life" went beyond merely reducing possessions or practicing minimalism. Rather, many responses leaned closer to an attitude of focusing on what matters and recovering the essence of life. One male respondent in their 40s defined a simple life as "a life that is not swayed by complicated human relationships I cannot control or by an excessive flood of information, but concentrates energy only on the few values that are truly important to me." One female respondent in their 30s described it as "a life where nothing weighs on my mind when I lie down to sleep."
When asked to choose just one "area they would most like to make simple first," "work and tasks" ranked first at 25.8%. "Human relationships" followed at 21.7%. Many people were found to want to first relieve work pressure and the fatigue of relationships amid their complicated daily lives.
Based on this survey, Longblack and LG Uplus plan to publish a seven-part in-depth interview series, "The Discovery of Simple: In a Complex Era, Asking the Value of Simplicity," every other Monday for three months starting on the 22nd. Participants in the interviews include Dominique Loreau, the French essayist who wrote "L'art de la Simplicité"; Ha Ji-hyun, a psychiatrist and director who has dealt with anxious minds; Jasper Morrison, the British designer who has emphasized the value of simple design under the theme of "Super Normal"; and Lee Ji-young, a space creator known as the "organizing queen."
