Remember brain rot (or brainrot, as some spell it), the Gen-Z slang-turned-household name that was popularized by gamers and meme makers when they describe mental exhaustion due to excessive Internet use.
As it turns out, brain rot has become more than a buzzword. Not in a Roblox kind of way (go ask your kid), but how researchers coin “serious mental and emotional effects from overconsuming digital content.”
Sounds familiar? Because it is. We’re all guilty, at least at some point. Remember the time when you said, “just one more TikTok video and I’ll go to sleep,” but you ended up dozing at 3 o’clock in the morning and waking up to your usual 5 o’clock alarm.
Bitdefender wrote that brain rot is that instance when we’re stuck in an “addictive loop,” watching useless content, but we do it anyway. To some extremes, we as consumers know that what we are watching has no real sense, no real value—walang kwenta—but we perceive it as fun, entertaining, time-killers.
Again, guilty. Brain rot is not recognized as a medical condition, but it’s real. It’s when your mind starts to fog after spending hours scrolling on our favorite sites, switching from one social media platform to another, and absorbing “meaningless data” and “negative news” that, if not contained, would lead us to believe that Bigfoot is still out there.
Simply put, brain rot is too much Internet. Watching tons of videos on YouTube while checking your email, updating your status, and realizing why Threads is slowly becoming the new Tinder. As Newport Institute has it, we’re overstimulating our brains. The more we do it, the more dopamine our system produces. In short, our brain tells us that flipping through all those pages and apps on our smartphones is happy time “even when you’re aware of its negative consequences.”
But that’s just for adults. Brain rot in children can be way worse when their parents forget about their daily screen time. And yes, it can fry their brains.
While it can be plus pogi points to give them extra time to play with their gadgets because they did good at school or behaved during a family gathering, forgetting to set the limit over time may lead to serious consequences.
Among others, Shichida reported that “digital overload” in children can lead to irritability, loss of focus, and even developmental delays, considering that the brains of children between birth and the age of six are in their “active phase.” What this means is that these are crucial years where they develop their foundation—from language to emotional regulation and executive functioning.
