Brain Rot is Far Worse Than You Think

um what the sigma hi uh W order by they're capolicchio do you have brain rot or something brain rot nonsense like this has completely destroyed genz and if we don't do something about it soon it'll ruin gen Alpha as well what exactly can we do about this poison to figure it out we first have to understand what brain rot really is brain rot isn't a clinical term it's a loose collection of negative symptoms such as lethargy mental fogginess and a reduced attention span it's the feeling that you're in cognitive decline even though you're probably not

that old you may have trouble organizing your thoughts recalling important information and making decisions it may also be extra challenging to come up with solutions to problems you exist in an unpleasant haes waiting for the fog to lift and the metaphorical sun to peer through the clouds in your mind all these symptoms are caused by one thing digital media we're on screens all the time many of us work on them and then go home to stare at even more screens we take frequent breaks from looking at our TVs to check our phones and take breaks

from scrolling on our phones to check emails on our work laptops some of us even struggle to follow the story in a film because we spent too much time checking social media what do you do when you have to wait for something before we had smartphones we would probably do nothing today the vast majority of us will check our phones before 10 seconds have passed we feel that itch and then reach into our pockets to scratch it our screens fall but taking away our idle time if it weren't for showers we'd probably never let our

minds wander or feel the sensation of boredom it's In These Quiet Moments that our default mode Network takes control this is where our minds take advantage of diverse internal sources that are key for Creative Solutions and insights it's the entire reason shower thoughts exist because there's barely any other place where we let our minds wander In the Heat of the Moment we're often not able to come up with the right answer to a problem we need these pauses these moments of boredom to come up with the best solution our increasingly short attention spans are a

very real phenomenon since 2004 our average attention span has gone from 2 and 1/2 minutes to just 47 seconds today focusing on what matters has been critical to human survival and in the modern world focus is still necessary for being successful whether it's at work or school or Even in our friendships and romantic relationships so what happens when an entire generation becomes addicted to content one of the questions I get ask the most is how can I start making videos like yours years ago when I started that answer would have been very difficult and cumbersome

but not anymore thanks to nid AI the video co-pilot I wish I had when I started with nid AI you can say goodbye to editing timelines because you can easily create and edit videos with simple text prompts all you have to do is give it a prompt for the type of video you want the more detailed The Prompt is the better and afterwards select the audience and platform of your video then in video AI will create an engaging script find high quality relevant footage add subtitles and even a human sounding voice over to give you

the first cut of your video in any language have you ever wondered what lurks in the darkest corners of space if you don't like horror but love space then this is for you from there you can give it simple text commands to make edits to your video don't like the style of the subtitles ask it to change it want a different intro ask the AI to start the video in a different way it will understand all of your commands and make the desired changes the best part about it is that within video AI you can

upload a 30-second recording of your voice in any language and it will clone your voice so you only have to record your voice once and use it in any video moving forward you can get started within video for free and create up to four videos a week but if you want to clone your voice and create videos without a watermark then I highly recommend you get the paid plan that starts as $20 a month and use code aperture 50 to get twice the number of video generation credits in your first month it gives you access

to all the AI tools as well as millions of royaltyfree stock footage Clips your own voiceover and a video editor all of which will cost you hundreds of dollars if you Source them individually back to our story you open your phone to check one text and without you realizing it you're scrolling through Tik Tok or Facebook these companies generate revenue from your attention which is why they design their platforms to suck you in and keep keep you in for as long as possible this Revenue model makes many people addicted to scrolling through endless posts stuck

in a loop of shallow engagement the notifications you receive give you quick dopamine hits making any other activity seem boring by comparison it becomes more difficult to focus on anything outside of social media and the pleasure you derive from it it's bedtime and you're lying down and almost ready to sleep there's just one thing you have to do first scroll through dozens of distressing headlines before you're relaxed enough to fall asleep many of us are addicted to staying up to date on world news which is almost always negative this habit increases our Stress and Anxiety

while making it harder to sleep even gaming is an exempt from this playing video games gives your brain a false sense of accomplishment when you complete tasks like finishing off the tough boss or finishing first in a tight race this triggers the brain's Reward Center and releases dopamine our brain then Associates gaming with this positive chemical release and we seek it out constantly the problem is that when real life can't compete with the dopamine hit you get from the game you start spending more time in a virtual world than the real one this everpresent urge

to play the game disrupts your life you become irritable when you have to pause to do something else you start cancelling social plans just to sit in the dark by yourself you start neglecting tangible goals at work and school to get instant gratification from your game now this isn't to say that Gaming's bad it's not but just so we're aware that just like with social media doing it it too much can have negative consequences you're constantly over stimulated you're watching TV and scrolling through Tik Tok on your phone at the same time your brain is

wired to constantly seek even more stimulation which reduces your ability to concentrate on specific tasks it's a behavioral phenomenon known as continuous partial attention brain rot is being discussed a lot now with the exponential increase in dopamine inducing media but it's not the first time the concept has come up when the printing press was first invented there was widespread concerned that poetry was causing brain rot romance narratives in the 16th and 17th centuries were similarly derided for supposedly poisoning the Mind people claim that TV was rotting your brain back when it became a household staple

there's a long history of concerned citizens accusing what they consider trashy media of causing brain rot I think it's fair to question whether there's a legitimate case against digital media or if we're just annoyed by people carelessly jamming into a subway car while watching a stream of Tik Tok videos luckily we do have a way to measure brain rot or something that matches the notion well enough it involves scanning the brain for gray and white matter our brain is composed of 40% gray matter and 60% white matter gray matter is where your brain processes cognition

speech learning voluntary movement perceptions and sensation it's also critical for controlling your emotions and memory we can essentially think and reason because of gray matter white matter provides communication between different areas of Gray matter in the body to do this it conducts processes and sends nerve signals up and down your spinal cord white matter has a big impact on your ability to move interpret sensory data and respond to external stimuli if you were to have issues with your white matter you would experience a deficit in your reflex reactions so what does this have to do

with our media consumption it turns out that a certain habit of ours has been lowering the volume of gray matter in our brains specifically in our frontal cortex and that habit is watching a lot of TV in a study by Dr Ryan Daltry from John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health researchers tracked the viewing habits of 599 Americans between 1990 and 2012 and discovered that watching excessive television in middle age can reduce your gray matter now if TV is lowering your gray matter what impacts are our phones tablets and social media having in a 2019

study of young adults researchers found something very alarming when they examin their brain scans participants who admitted to excessive screen time showed clear signs that their cerebral cortex was thinning it's a layer of gray matter responsible for processing memory making decisions and problem solving researchers posit that this could be the reason you experience mental fog after spending a lot of time on your phone but what's even more concerning is that it could increase the risk of early onset dementia with age we naturally lose gray matter however there are activities you can do to maintain it

such as getting good sleep being social and managing your stress excessive screen time on the other hand reduces the gray matter in your brain overall it's like going to a leaky faucet and opening it up just a bit more digital media overload has a negative impact on adults but it's not the fully grown that we need to worry most about screens are having a devastating effect on a vulnerable group that's not yet gained self-sufficiency gen Alpha screen time has a very different effect on people at all stages of life for decades kids have been watching

TV and parents have been complaining that they sit in front of the TV too much but for the last 10 to 15 years mobile screens have become a staple for young children by age 1 kids are able to interact with these devices meaningfully smartphones and tablets are so intuitive that toddlers easily navigate the app structure even if they don't entirely understand the layout kids are often left alone with these screens that offer constant simulation child directed apps are designed to keep kids entertained as consistently as possible YouTube videos are edited to keep children constantly stimulated

so they don't walk off somewhere and the YouTube algorithm itself is throwing more videos to keep stimulation high at all times again the goal is to keep humans on the platform whether they're adults or babies many of us grew up with video games in the household and it's hard to deny that this form of media was extra simulating compared to TV programming it made stopping a game tough and often filled our heads at school with thoughts of how to beat a boss in Zelda or build an entire world in Civ it's hard to imagine the

impact of tablets and smartphones on kids but such a seamless path to a consistent drip feed of dopamine all they have to do is swipe open the screen and endless Amusement is at their fingertips to clarify it's not like parents are unanimously giving their children wholesale over to the screens and the algorithms many resist screens altogether or slowly introduce them to their child's lives monitoring their screen time but for many kids their brains are being rewired negatively with plenty of supporting evidence extensive screen use can impact preschoolers language comprehension and ability to speak on MRI

scans heavy digital media consumption coincided with poor Integrity of white matter tracks which are closely correlated with language development researchers also found that heavy screen use coincided with lower reading skills memory recall reasoning skills and self-control a lot of factors play into a child's ability to succeed in life we've known for long time that a person's socioeconomic background is a great predictor of where someone will end up in life it's sad to think that technology and the endless striving to capture attention are yet another factor that limits what a kid could be when they grow

up a child's reading ability is considered a good indicator of their future success in school as digital media consumption Rises among children more will struggle with their education and what comes next as an adolescent navigating your social life can already be a nightmare other kids or teens can be be cruel when they often seek to embarrass you as often as they can by comparison adult life is far more collegial your friends peers and co-workers are much Kinder overall adolescence are lucky if their closest friend isn't also an enemy your emotions are changing a lot of

the time kids go through puberty experiencing hormonal and other physical changes I don't really need to go into the details but obviously it's a vulnerable state this is when your sense of selfworth and identity are forming you're learning impulse control and emotional regulation you develop romantic interests in others for the first time you take risks you ask someone out these feelings you have are new raw and probably hard to manage other adolescents have big decisions to make and their school performance will greatly impact their future but they still want to have fun with friends and

experience new things it's a tough time and that's without factoring in social media our newer medium for interacting with our cohort the impact of social media on adolescence is so severe that adolescents now process emotions differently the amydala is where we process these emotions the gray matter in this region of the brain actually differs between The Adolescents who are active on social media and those that are not researchers don't know exactly what this entails yet but we know that social media has some benefits for teens as well as some serious problems with access to these

platforms teens say they feel more accepted and have access to people who can support them they also feel more connected to their friends lives but as many of us are where being connected to people online can have some troubling consequences what if the person you're engaging with online is cyber bullying you or about the Discord Channel you joined what if everybody's mocking you because of a rumor that was spread around excessive screen use isn't only associated with more anxiety but with less empathy overall Beyond harmful interactions with acquaintances and strangers the algorithm presents them with

all kinds of content to see what sticks videos depicting self harm and suicidal ideation have been linked to numerous deaths when these things are normalized by Relentless content extreme actions feel more normal and lessen the barrier to action social media can also affect a teen sense of body image being exposed to endless photos of Beach vacations taking in the most flattering light can damage their self-esteem it gives them a distorted sense of their own body and can cause eating disorders in your own experience you've probably noticed that people enjoy bragging about their accomplishments online they

often start with something like I'm proud to announce I just got accepted into the such and such program exposure to this level of boasting can set self-expectation levels that aren't remotely realistic adolescence using social media often become addicted the constant reward triggering that happens in the brain from notifications and updates could form new neural Pathways that are comparable to drug addiction keep in mind that this is a period in their lives when their gray matter is still developing up until the age of 8 the volume of your gray matter grows and after that your gr

matter increases in density until the age of about 20 what happens in the Adolescent brain will shape an individual's ability to think and reason for the rest of their life we can't say for certain how adolescence will turn out when addicted to social media but its impact will be felt and it's hard to imagine it being for the better some countries are already considering Banning teens below a certain age or having access to social media it'll be tough to enforce and come with some privacy RS the trade-off is that it may help some Adolescence in

the long run humans have this evolutionary constraint of knowing about 150 people social media puts us in continuous contact with way more than that limit the result is cortical over taxing in the brain we don't exactly know what consequences this has but it's possible that it leads to anxiety issues with memory and attention deficits there's so much we don't know about how social media is affecting us we just have a wealth of symptoms to navigate and try to connect with specific causes that coincide we often assume the brain is very resilient but as neuroscientists often

suggest it's actually quite modable any human activity that's done regularly will leave an imprint on the brain and that includes our screen habits we live in an age that not only encourages but demands multitasking in our jobs were expected to do our work while constantly being interrupted by emails or work software notifications just the Ping from slack is enough to send Panic running down your spine and that work often beli leads into our time at home when we're trying to cook dinner or shut off for the night the truth is we're really not that good

at multitasking and it does US active harm when we try to focus on multiple things at once the brain focuses arbitrarily and not strongly we're lightly present in a task and vulnerable to forgetting key information related to what we're working on every task is an idea a goal and the actions that get us to that goal to perform the task we need to have the goal in mind while we do the required actions obviously this isn't always that simple sometimes the actions we take aren't successful on the first try and we have to take a

different approach we rely on the same cognitive Control Function to perform all of our tasks unlike computers we don't have multiple cores switching tasks frequently creates interference it takes a while to get back to that state where we're clear on the actions we have to take and have the goal firmly in mind when our phone interrupts us with a notification we often end up switching tasks by checking our device and if we have this mobile by our side we're always at risk of multitasking even if we don't plan to work that way people will often

listen to podcasts while they work but then complain that they don't recall much after the fact by multitasking we sacrifice what we get out of each task and that includes your wonderful History Podcast when riding my bike recently I noticed other cyclists stopping in the middle of the path to check their phones it's the same process every time they feel a buzz from their pocket can't resist pulling out their phone and slowly come to a stop the compulsion to check their not notifications is so great that they will mindlessly halt the bike traffic behind them

just to see what's up they put aside their goal to get to a destination and consideration of others just to get the dopamine hit this habit of checking their notifications is so deeply entrenched that they don't seem to respect any other considerations when we perform one Habit in place of another it changes our brain since Google search became so prevalent our memory has actually gotten worse we subcontract out brain functions such as absorbing facts and answers to the likes of Google and cloud storage technology now we have a new technological innovation that threatens to replace

thousands of humans that we use every day and sometimes directly for our profession we're currently in the early days of subcontracting many of our brain functions over to AI what rot will this transfer bring if Google search has impacted our ability to recall information it's hard to Fathom how AI will affect the human brain when someone engages in creative writing their brain is very active in several ways for non-experts vision processing regions are activated as if the writer is actually seeing the scene they're creating the active writing also engages an area of the brain known

for holding numerous pieces of information professional writers use more of the brain associated with speech they also use their called it nucleus which is associated with skills moving from a conscious effort to an automatic process like when you don't need to think about how to cut vegetables you're just kind of doing it writing is just one skill that AI threatens to make obsolete currently AI is putting together blogs emails and early drafts of creative writing but what happens to the brain when few people are actually doing the work themselves writing an idea challenges us to

examine it more closely it enables us to evaluate the idea better we're also able to look at different sections of our work and judge whether they're relevant to the whole and all of this happens in writing writing affects the way you think and communicate it allows us to develop ideas further than we would in any other format if you skip this step by using generative AI you're missing out on exploring the full potential of your idea and when you write you're committing the work to long-term memory you're better able to recall it in the future

and this is even more true when writing on paper my academic life improved a lot when I started to take notes seriously writing is only one area that AI threatens to take over it's currently being adopted in every piece of software hoping to be competitive you've probably noticed that most of the ads for products or services are now promoting some new AI features the idea that you can replace the early work in a project with AI does come with consequences the human brain is complex and hard to predict with any certainty you may not fully

realize it but AI is pumping out content at a staggering rate plenty of videos and images are presented as AI generated but a lot of it goes under the radar for a non-critical audience in the24 NHL playoffs a popular American Sports podcast host landed in trouble for sharing an image depecting a brown bear sexually assaulting a polar bear both Bears represented specific teams in the NHL while it was obviously now in poor taste to share the image nobody seemed to notice or care that the visual was generated by AI on social media it's becoming harder

to tell what content is made by humans and what is done by AI we know that humans can put out lowquality posts with bad wording lately however it's hard to tell what is a poorly written inside joke or pure AI nonsense the images are easily distinguished by their six finger hands and words featuring unrecognizable characters overall the line's getting blurry it feels increasingly like you're just waiting through the nonsense to get to a hot take that makes you feel bad about yourself I can't help but wonder what impact this is having on our mindless late

night scrolling every time I see an AI generated post I feel like my grve matter is shrinking on the spot but of course I don't have any data to back that up the line between what is and what isn't legitimate information is becoming harder to distinguish we already have a crisis of disinformation and with AI we're slowly drowning in messy content where the Creator isn't invested in truth or lies it just executes a prompt and there's plenty of content producers that won't care enough to verify the truth value of the output the workforce is already

changing because of AI entry-level jobs are starting to disappear and at the moment we can scoff at the quality of the work AI produces but it might not be long before we start to feel inferior to it what happens when our writing skills aren't good enough to compete with algorithm-driven content that has the world's best writing to draw from many of us would just give up trying if there's one potential positive to the situation it's that AI could make being on social media intolerable users might leave in scores opening Windows for the first time in

months and smelling the breeze it's possible however that we haven't considered the whole brain rot situation barely with excessive screen use our brains are using resources differently it's possible that we're simply adapting to our new reality AI gurus often claim that the jobs we lose to AI will be replaced by newer different jobs just as the workplace adapts so does our brain we'll move on from ideating and writing with our hands to yelling at chat gbt to get to work our brains will put resources into our prompting skills and we'll be fine the problem with

this optimistic angle is that these adaptations make us worse at everything else they make us worse friends and partners they make us terrible pedestrians cyclists and drivers we become less intelligent more literate and quick to anger brain rot hurts our memory and gives us a foggy world when most of us crave Clarity what you're doing on the screen likely impacts the brain differently but we don't have a lot of information beyond the simple notion of screen time causing issues with gray matter with this limited data we're stuck with strong correlation but not causation knowing what

media is worse for the human brain would really be helpful is there a difference between watching TV and scrolling social media is being on both at the same time multiplier of gratter reduction and what about highly gamified learning apps is duolingo's language learning platform rotting our brains by constantly triggering our reward center or is it helping the brain by drip teaching us a new language perhaps it's doing both at the same time it's hard to imagine that writing a script in a focused way on a computer has the same impact as being on Tik Tok

for 5 minutes that would imply that the screens themselves are reducing gray matter and that's probably not the case well we have to wait for confirmation I think our subjective experience of screens May point us in the right direction most of us are well aware that Doom scrolling seems to have a worse impact on our well-being than watching an episode of White Lotus it's also easier to get a child to stop watching TV than it is to get them off an iPad Tech Giants designed digital media to keep us glued to their platforms for as

long as possible this model is shaping who we are and soon enough we'll know how that compares to other forms of media this was a lot of negative information and angles to drop on you all at once and while Society appears to be headed for more brain rot there's still a lot you can do the answer to your brain rot problem is actually really simple and you already know approximately what you need to do you need to do nothing I don't mean you shouldn't change anything I'm suggesting that you literally do nothing sit stand or

walk or let your mind wander do this a lot don't check your phone don't track your steps just take more time to do nothing when you wake up in the morning don't look at your phone for an hour before you go to bed put your phone on the charger and read or something in the sitcom Seinfeld which is famously about nothing the four main characters meet up constantly to gripe and commiserate this socialization is great for your brain even if it didn't work out so well for them lastly you should probably also meditate exercise eat

well read and write often but if you take away anything from this video it's to allow s some time to wander aimlessly in the mind and on the road