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How to prevent brain rot
Summary
It’s the word of the year but keep brain rot away by putting your phone down and spending time in the real world
Earlier this week, Oxford University Press picked “brain rot" as the word of the year, beating out other contenders such as “demure" and “dynamic pricing". The selection was based on usage and public voting after it was shortlisted.
As a therapist, I’m not surprised. The choice of the word is a reflection of the times we are living in when we spend so much of our waking hours in a virtual world.
The past year has been filled with clients across age groups talking about how they feel their brain is changing, and not in good ways, due to the content they consume online. Clients say they are aware that they have shifted to mediocre content yet they find they can’t stop themselves from consuming it.
Brain rot is not a diagnosis or a condition but a colloquial or slang term that is being used a lot more in the last few years, specifically in relation to a surge in consumption of content across social media. The definitions of brain rot which exist online can be understood in the context of the impact of online content on our mental and intellectual state.
The definitions focus on how excessive consumption of low quality content and information that doesn’t add much value to our lives is contributing to a decline in our intellectual capabilities and mental health.
Parents in therapy sessions often mention concerns that the trivial short-form content their 10- or 12-year-old children are consuming is dumbing their intelligence. The reality is that it’s not just children or teenagers; people in their 50s and 60s are falling for this too and are unable to recognise how it is impacting them.
The earliest recorded use of the word ‘brain rot’, according to Oxford University Press, was in 1854 in Henry David Thoreau’s book Walden. Over the years, the usage and meaning of the word has changed in the context of time spent in the digital world consuming memes and content that is unchallenging, so much so that people cannot seem to recollect what they were watching a few minutes ago.
Also read: How to flourish in an age of tech
As a therapist, my worry is that there is a price we are paying or will be paying in the years to come if we do not break this habit. I use the word “habit" quite seriously as clients often discuss reaching out for the phone and watching content when they are bored, distracted, unable to get started on a task or during their downtime. It has become an itch they have to scratch, a cycle they cannot break out of.
They do understand that it is impacting their ability to engage in deep work, stay focused or engage with others yet they find themselves trapped. This habit fills up their free time and comes in the way of sleeping on time and responding to essential messages or emails.
Most people intend to spend just 10-15 minutes on social media and don’t even realise when it runs into an hour or more.
We are sucked into a rabbit hole of content that is numbing us and dissociating us from relationships and tasks that need to be done, but we keep going back to this form of consumption, confusing it as a means of soothing.
The sense of being overwhelmed that comes with binge consumption is leaving us exhausted, contributing to fogginess and shorter attention spans, and is lowering our threshold for patience when it comes to people in the real world.
We all know how to address this addiction or “brain rot" but the biggest concern is that we are unable to do so.
My suggestion would be to start with something as simple as not checking the phone 30 minutes before you sleep and then slowly move to setting longer time limits. Another good habit to break the bad one is to keep the phone away when you talk to friends and loved ones.
Sonali Gupta is a Mumbai-based psychotherapist. She is the author of the book You Will be Alright : A Guide to Navigating Grief and has a YouTube channel, Mental Health with Sonali.
