‘Brain Rot’: A Meme or a Worry?

By Fashion Editor Stephen O’ Brien

If you were to ask someone 10 years ago “What are your hobbies?” and their response was “I mostly just scroll online”, you’d assume that they are a bit lonely, maybe unfulfilled in their life. Today, however, there’s a worrying trend of people struggling with finding and partaking in recreational hobbies or interests, in part due to a lack of drive or attention span. Gloria Marks, a professor at the University of California, conducted a study on the human attention span in 2003, and found that the average person’s was two and a half minutes. Fast forward to 2016, and the average was 47 seconds. And that was well before the release of TikTok and the modern epidemic of short-form, dopamine-gripping content. 

It’s been shown that the blue light from phone screens disturbs the body’s release of melatonin, the chemical that makes you tired. Have you ever found yourself scrolling on social media at 10pm, and suddenly it’s 2am and you’re still wide awake? That’s because your phone has held your brain hostage, and stopped the brain from being able to rest, even though it wants to. This obviously has a detrimental effect, as sleep deprivation affects not just your brain and mental health, but messes with your body’s natural circadian rhythm.

The idea of ‘brainrot’ content online is a meme, attributed to the stupid, mindless content you find on TikTok of Cocomelon or Roblox characters, with some song parody replacing the words with ‘rizz’ or ‘skibidi’. People (perhaps jokingly) question what damage these flashy, overstimulating videos will do to the younger generation consuming it; if the next generation of adults have already been doomed to addiction and the inability to think critically through their early exposure to dopamine-sucking algorithms.

However, this generation of adults, myself included, have too been manipulated by the internet and social media into addiction. My average screen-time last week was 9 hours, and whilst I was also working and being productive, and I use my phone a lot for research and communication, I also know a lot of that time was spent watching hour long video essays about video game speedruns on YouTube when I could have been reading, writing, or exercising. And I don’t even use TikTok; I try to avoid short-form content as much as possible. Unfortunately though, every app seems to have its own knock-off of TikTok, whether it is Instagram’s Reels or YouTube’s Shorts. They are unavoidable in the app and are pushed upon the user without the option to be turned off or blocked.

The effects of social media on our brain and dopamine release cannot be understated; Dopamine is released from the brain for doing pleasurable activities, and high amounts of dopamine act as a reward for completing the jobs and tasks that take time and effort. Social media, however, produces extreme doses of dopamine and this acts as a drug for the human brain. This is why so many people seem to struggle with finding hobbies they enjoy, as nothing gives more pleasure to the brain than social media. Why do something that takes time and effort and won’t give you that pleasure immediately, when TikTok will give it to you for hours at a time? As the Internet has become integral to modern life, our brains have not yet caught up, and so many people have become addicted to scrolling at no real fault of their own. It’s an addiction, and one that is economically beneficial to the higher ups at Meta, X, and ByteDance (the parent company of TikTok). Why else would they create a content model designed to capture your attention, and one that is so easy to get trapped in?

In the grand scheme of things, social media is new, and the health risks of overconsuming it are only beginning to be understood. Eventually laws and restrictions will be created to combat this parasite on our brains, but for now, the only thing that can be done is avoiding the addiction’s trigger. Obviously, that’s easier said than done. Social media has become an integral part of most people’s daily life and way of communicating. But maybe turning off your phone an hour before bed, and performing some unwinding task like reading or drawing will be more fulfilling in the long run. The brain needs time to unwind, and as fun as scrolling through Instagram Reels can be, the stimulation that it causes will not be resting. Dopamine detoxes are incredibly hard, but maybe give it a go. It might change your life for the better.