Do you find yourself watching hours of videos on social media? Memes or Reels on Instagram and Tik Tok? Well, let's face it: It happens to us all!
If you find yourself endlessly watching videos, you may be suffering from brain rot, a term that has earned Oxford Word of the Year.
This is a term that reflects concerns over the impact of consuming too much low-quality content online, especially on social networks. The use of this term has seen an increase of 230% from 2023 to 2024.
Psychologist and Oxford University Professor Andrew Przybylski says the word's popularity is a "symptom of the times we live in".
'Brain rot' outranked other viral words, including demure, romance and dynamic pricing.
What is 'brain rot'?
'Brain rot' or brain corruption is defined as the alleged impairment of a person's mental or intellectual state, especially as a result of consuming material that is considered trivial or simple.
The first recorded use of the term 'brain rot' predates the creation of the internet - it was written in 1854 by Henry David Thoreau in his book 'Walden'.
He criticized society's tendency to discourage complex ideas and saw this as part of a tendency to make intellectual efforts.
This term first gained popularity on social media among the Gen Z and Gen Alpha communities, but is now being used more widely to describe low-quality and worthless content found on social platforms.
Prof. Przybylski says that "there is no evidence that brain rot is a real phenomenon."
"Rather, it describes our dissatisfaction with the online world and is a word we can use to sum up the concerns we have about social media."
Casper Grathwohl, President of Oxford Languages, says that looking at Oxford's speech of the year over the past two decades, we can understand how society is more concerned about how our virtual lives are evolving, how internet culture is penetrating so much in who we are and what we speak.
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