(NewsNation) — The amount of time teens spend on their phones and tablets, excessively scrolling through social media posts, is likely diminishing their brain activity and creating health concerns.
The act of excessively soaking in negative news or social media posts, known as “doomscrolling” has led to growing amounts of brain rot over the past year, experts found.
Oxford University Press selected “brain rot” as its word of the year for 2024. Researchers found that between 2023 and 2024, the times “brain rot” was used in conversation increased by 230%. Brain rot is defined as “the supposed deterioration of a person’s mental or intellectual state” as a result of over-consumption of online content, Oxford University Press wrote this month in announcing its annual Word of the Year honor.
In addition to popular online platforms such as Instagram and TikTok, researchers also included artificial tools such as ChatGPT as a source of brain rot.
The term “brain rot” dates back to 1854 when author Henry David Thoreau used the word in his book “Walden” when he criticized society’s tendency to devalue complex ideas.
Oxford University Press experts found that “brain rot” has increased because of the impact of teens and other online users consuming excessive amounts of “low-quality online content.”, especially on social media.
Media psychologist Dr. Don Grant told NewsNation that social media engineers are tapping into the psychological flaw in the limbic system that causes humans to seek intermittent rewards. He described doomscrolling as a form of a digital slot machine that humans feed off of.
Grant, the national adviser of healthy device management at Newport Healthcare in Los Angeles, said one of his major concerns is how brain rot is affecting imagination and education.
“We don’t have to imagine anything anymore,” Grant told VICE. “We pick up our devices every time. I’m worried about memory. I’m worried about education.”
In Australia, social media usage has been banned for children under the age of 16 over health concerns connected to too much time being spent online.
“There’s a direct correlation between the rising anxiety, depression, eating disorders, self-harm and suicide among teenagers and the introduction of social media into their world,” Greg Attwells, the director of 36 Months Movement, told NewsNation.
Other experts warn that concerns over brain rot only continue to grow. The more teens and others spend on screens, the more they struggle with things like attention span, VICE reported.
“They feel brain foggy, they (have) less concentration,” Dr. Kyra Bobinet, told Fox News. “They can’t do deep work. And then there’s also this epidemic of loneliness that has been kind of sitting on the heels of this, because we can’t really focus on anything, including relationship-building.”
