As a mom of a teenager, I’ve been observing brain rot in my son’s cohort for years, starting way back to the childhood gateway drug of Angry Birds on iPad through Call of Duty on Xbox, and now via the live-streaming of creators on Twitch. The result of growing up very online is that their young brains developed feeding on hits of video game dopamine, a funner and less effortful activity than spending afternoons concentrating on novels or engaged in—gasp—boredom. (In all fairness, my son did go through a mid-teen Euro philosopher stage, but once we got the meds straight, he perked away from Nietzsche.) “I find it fascinating that the term ‘brain rot’ has been adopted by Gen Z and Gen Alpha, those communities largely responsible for the use and creation of the digital content the term refers to,” writes Casper Grathwohl, President of Oxford Languages. “These communities have amplified the expression through social media channels, the very place said to cause ‘brain rot’. It demonstrates a somewhat cheeky self-awareness in the younger generations about the harmful impact of social media that they’ve inherited.”
According to my son, Grathwohl is correct. Generation Z and younger understand their role in the meme economy. As a mom, I’m alternately impressed and saddened by their sangfroid. My son and his peers know they are being mentally massaged by online media, frequently in bad faith efforts to get their attention, money and votes. And yet—here’s the sad part—they know that, considering the enormous pressure of contemporary young adulthood’s economic, political and social pressures handed them by previous generations, the alternative is an almost Herculean task to keep sharp, awake and active. It’s practically impossible to stay sober and stop the brain from rotting.
