TikTok, Instagram, YouTube—can overuse actually affect your brain?

Doomscrolling. Instagram obsessions. Mindless YouTube rabbit holes that start with “just one more” and end two hours later in a haze of mukbangs, crime recaps, and slime videos. It’s the modern trance state. We’re not proud of it—but we’re not really stopping either. In 2024, the Oxford University Press gave this feeling a name: brain rot. Not just a meme. Not just a Gen Z catchphrase. The official Word of the Year.

It’s defined as the “supposed deterioration of a person’s mental or intellectual state” caused by consuming “trivial or unchallenging” content online. But anyone who’s ever closed TikTok with a groan already knew what it meant. This article isn’t about blaming screens. It’s about what this word reveals: not just how we use the internet, but how the internet is reshaping how we think, feel, and notice ourselves.

Let’s be clear: “brain rot” isn’t a medical diagnosis. It’s cultural shorthand. You’ll find it in TikTok captions under sped-up voiceovers and day-in-the-life montages: “brain rotted from watching cleaning videos but my apartment still looks like chaos.”

It’s in Twitter replies, on Reddit, in IG story jokes:
“me after three hours of watching strangers eat airplane food”
“can’t tell if it’s depression or just YouTube autoplay”

It’s not just the language of burnout. It’s the language of performance-aware exhaustion. We know we’re wasting time, but we also know we’re supposed to care. The contradiction is part of the vibe.

What people are describing with “brain rot” is less about losing IQ points and more about leaking time, attention, and emotional capacity. The internet used to be a place to find things. Now it’s a place to forget what you were looking for in the first place. This isn’t always doom. Sometimes it’s cozy. Harmless. A slow escape. But the rot feeling creeps in when the escape stops being chosen—and starts being automatic.

Because most of us aren’t actually chasing joy anymore. We’re chasing quiet. Something soft. Something that doesn’t demand anything from us. But that soft edge often comes wrapped in overstimulation: video cuts every two seconds, tiny text overlays, autoplay clips. Our brains stay lit up, even when we’re emotionally clocked out.

There’s a strange irony to it all. We know how much time we spend online. Our screen time stats tell us. Our posture tells us. Our dry eyes and drained batteries tell us. But we still reach for our phones.

Not because we’re lazy. But because our brains—and our culture—are built around access. Fast. Easy. Passive. The ability to consume, forever, without friction. That’s what “brain rot” captures. It’s not a lack of willpower. It’s the side effect of infrastructure designed to be too convenient to question.

The behaviors that lead to “brain rot” have become daily rituals. And rituals have meaning—even if we don’t always like what they reflect. We eat dinner with a video playing in the background. We scroll during bathroom breaks. We wake up and check our phones before our feet hit the floor. The ritual is not just habit. It’s comfort. It’s structure.

But it also marks the erosion of boundaries. Not just between work and rest, but between focus and noise. Between being alone and being filled by algorithmic chatter. And so we end up overfed but undernourished. Surrounded by content but starved for depth.

What’s fascinating about “brain rot” is how performative it’s become. It’s not a secret shame. It’s a shared confession. We don’t just admit we’ve been sucked into the scroll—we joke about it. Aesthetic “brain rot diaries” show chaotic screenshots from Reddit, Discord, and TikTok with moody captions like "rotting in peace."

There’s a kind of identity in it now. A digital archetype: the girl with glazed eyes watching 10 videos at once while curled up with snacks and a soft hoodie. The guy who spends 7 hours watching fan edits and can’t remember any of them. We’re not hiding the rot. We’re branding it.

Why did this word catch on so fast? Because it names something we were already feeling but hadn’t framed. It gave language to a discomfort that’s not dramatic enough to call addiction, not clinical enough to treat, but too real to ignore.

It’s the mental version of eating nothing but chips for days. You’re not starving—but you’re not thriving either. And so “brain rot” becomes a way to laugh at ourselves while asking, quietly: is this really how I want to spend my time?

The answer isn’t digital detox. Most of us won’t delete our apps. We won’t throw our phones into the ocean and go live in a cabin. We don’t even want that. We just want better rhythms. Some are curating their feeds more carefully. Some are setting screen time limits that they actually obey. Others are switching to low-stimulation content—like silent cleaning videos or people walking in the rain.

This is not resistance. It’s recalibration. We’re not rejecting the internet. We’re trying to find a version that makes us feel more human, not less.

“Brain rot” is funny. But it’s also a cultural checkpoint.

It asks: What are we using to fill the gaps in our day?
What counts as rest now?
When did silence start to feel threatening?
And are we living in our minds—or outsourcing that too?

These aren’t questions for productivity coaches or digital wellness influencers. They’re questions for anyone who’s ever sat on the toilet watching three TikToks at once and still felt bored.It’s easy to roll your eyes at “brain rot” if you didn’t grow up with algorithmic intimacy.

Boomers had TV. Gen X had magazines. Millennials had blogs and forums. But Gen Z? They’ve never known a world without feedback loops measuring their attention—and feeding it back to them in increasingly fragmented, optimized slices.

This isn’t just “short attention spans.” It’s a new kind of mental architecture, one shaped by platforms designed to reward swipes, not pauses. So when older generations call it laziness or escapism, they miss the point. This isn’t just consumption. It’s the background noise of identity formation—loud, relentless, and curated by strangers we’ll never meet.

“Brain rot” also shows up when the world feels too heavy. During wars, climate anxiety, AI panic, or even just job search burnout, there’s a weird comfort in low-stakes content. Watching someone alphabetize their pantry. Following a squirrel rescue account. Refreshing the same app five times in ten minutes. It’s not apathy. It’s protection. And maybe that’s the real twist. “Brain rot” is what happens when digital life becomes too much—and not enough—all at once.

Words go viral for a reason. “Brain rot” stuck because it hit a nerve—gently, ironically, but unmistakably. It’s a sign of the cultural mood: tired, self-aware, slightly hopeless but still willing to joke about it. But more than that, it’s a subtle rebellion. Not against the platforms, necessarily. But against the idea that this—this version of the internet, this rhythm of consumption, this pacing of thought—is all we get.

So maybe the rot isn’t just decay. Maybe it’s the beginning of awareness. And maybe that’s enough to start asking different questions—before our attention, our memory, and our joy become just more content to scroll past.