The Brainrot epidemic
Time to read: 2 min
Last week, I was at my school to return some books that I had borrowed to study for my final exams. As I arrived, I heard children screaming, which is kinda normal, right? What struck me were the sentences these kids were shouting. They weren't having normal conversations; they were shouting terms and phrases common on TikTok and Instagram. They shouted “Bomboclat” and “Skibidi.” I probably used common memes in my teenage years as well to communicate with my friends for fun. This in itself isn’t a big problem, but the overuse of these terms and the change in language, and therefore the change in our brains, are the problems.
The term “brainrot” is currently popular on social media. People are becoming aware of the effects on their brains that nonstop indulgence in social media causes. Imagine you’re spending more than three hours per day on Instagram, doing nothing but scrolling through reels. I’ve been there, done that. The feeling you get from that is always the same: brain fatigue and extreme tiredness. I was more tired after using my phone that long than I was after working out. The impact of spending too much time on your phone or in front of your computer is lasting.
I was staying up late nearly every day, playing video games and watching YouTube after my final exams. After doing that for a week, I realized that it was enough. I was tired during the day and slept until 10 a.m., which is late for me. During the day, I felt tired and the brain fatigue was imminent. I thought of the little kids at my school and remembered my teenage years during lockdown—a dark time in my memory, which I cannot recall even 50%.
We humans are not designed to spend that much time in virtual nonsense. We are born to discover and learn through firsthand experience, be it through social interactions or personal experiences.
The good thing about "brainrot" is that everyone must experience it for themselves at least once. The amount you learn from that unpleasant experience is astonishing. The moment you realize how much time you have wasted, your life becomes better.
“It is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste a lot of it.” ~ Seneca
Don’t waste away in the real world by staying in the fake one for too long.
