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[1] In 2024, Oxford University Press named “brain rot” as its word of the year, defining it as the “supposed deterioration of a person’s mental or intellectual state” caused by overconsuming “trivial or unchallenging” material found online.
[2] “It’s what happens when you consume too much low-quality online content, which is like junk food for the brain,” said Dr Andreana Benitez, an associate professor in the department of neurology at the Medical University of South Carolina, in the United States. But whether that content is actually harming the brain – and how – remains unclear.
[3] According to the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), half of teens in the US spend four hours or more looking at screens each day. There are no federal health guidelines in the US for how much daily screen time is appropriate for teens. Researchers lack sufficient data to fully understand the concept of brain rot and what it might lead to. “There really isn’t a coherent science around it,” Benitez said.
[4] There is, however, CDC data showing that one in four teenage frequent scrollers reports feeling anxious or depressed. Adolescents who spend more time in front of screens may be more likely to experience mental health issues, including depression, anxiety, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder and oppositional defiant disorder, and related physical symptoms such as pain, dizziness or nausea. That is according to a 2024 analysis of data from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development study, the largest long-term child brain development study in the US.
[5] Other studies have found potential links between brain rot and emotional desensitisation, cognitive overload, negative self-worth and impaired executive function skills including memory, planning and decision-making.
[6] While there is no evidence that hours of daily screen time are changing the structure of the human brain, it is what is not happening during those hours that could be harmful, especially for young people whose brains are still developing. That is according to Dr Costantino Iadecola, director and chair of the Feil Family Brain and Mind Research Institute at Weill Cornell Medical Centre in New York.
[7] The more time young people spend in front of screens, the less time they spend being physically active or having face-to-face human interactions that supply the developing brain with critical, complex sensory and emotional input, he said. “Brain development requires diversity of exposures,” Iadecola said. When you are on your phone, you are not getting these other experiences. “We are substituting artificial interactions for human interactions, and artificial interactions lack the complexity of the human experience – the verbal, sensory and emotional reactions we have after interacting with people.”
[8] It is not just screen time that matters – it is also screen content. “If you consume excessive amounts of low-quality online content, you are more likely to be exposed to information that might distort your perception of reality and harm your mental health,” Benitez said.
Source: Tribune News Service, June 18
