How Brain Rot Is Changing All of Us (And How to Fight Back)

People talk about brain rot is like your personal failing. Gen Z can't focus, attention spans are shrinking, the ADHD diagnosis is rising up. And to fight brain rot, the advice is always the same. Use your phone less, go outside, just be more mindful. And if you can't, that is your weakness. But what if that framing is exactly... what they want you to believe. Billion dollar companies are using the best science, the best engineers, unlimited resources to fight for one thing, your attention. And they're not fighting fear. But why do they want your attention? Because you are not the customer. you're actually the product. The more time you spend on the app, the more data they collect about you. The more data they collect, the more valuable you become to advertisers. The more valuable you are to advertisers, the more money the platform makes. TikTok's US revenue hit $16 billion last year. Researchers estimate that over $5 billion of that comes directly from users 17 or younger. So the entire incentive structure is built around one thing keep you on the apps as long as possible and keep you scrolling from a lawsuit filed by the state of nebraska we now have access to tiktok's own internal documents they describe their own product as having a slot machine effect and list features like infinite scroll autoplay and constant notifications as things that can be considered manipulative so it's their whole business model and your phone is literally and your recommendation feed is literally designed like a slot machine Casinos make most amount of money from slots because of something called intermittent reinforcement, a psychological trick where reward come at unpredictable intervals. Let's think about the things that we get recommended on our For You page for a second. You might be coming across something that is related to politics that makes you angry and then you scroll a bit, maybe you come across to something that is related to fitness or maybe to cats. So the content that you get recommended to do is not really always the same. Once in a while there are different topics. juggling up and most of them are okay they're not necessarily the most entertaining content and some of them are boring but here and there you find content that completely resonates with you or maybe makes you laugh or maybe it's a cute cat video that makes you go like oh this is so cute that you share with others this unpredictability is basically what keeps you swiping maybe the next one will be better that's what your brain thinks and this way of feeling makes you hooked and it's actually not just the content in a 2024 study from pekin university two groups watched the exact same video for the same amount of time one group swiped them through tick tock the other group watched them as one continuous video so it was the same content and same duration the only difference was the motion of swiping the interesting thing is that the swiping group showed significantly reduced analytic thinking and the non-swiping group didn't so the physical gesture independent of what you're watching changes how your brain information. So the interface of short-form platforms are not neutral. It's actually doing something to you. And it also gets worse when you look at the pace. A 2025 study from the University of Bristol let one group switch TikToks as fast as they wanted. Another group was limited to 10 switches in 10 minutes. And a control group watched nothing. The unlimited switching group got worse at prospective memory, which is basically the memory that helps you remember things. For example, you enter a room and you forget why you came to that room in the first place that's prospective memory and the limiting switching group actually got better the interesting is that it's on the same apps and they're watching the same videos but the pace was different and the outcome was completely different rapid context switching is not just tiring it is literally impairing your ability to remember your own intentions if you're listening to this and thinking okay cool but I already know this and I still end up doomscrolling and forgetting my plans, then I suggest you to look at something that I built, which is my Kaizen system. I made Kaizen because I was constantly exhausted, starting every day, staring at all the possibilities and to-dos I've been avoiding. I didn't need another 3D planner, I needed a system that actually pulls me out of that Sunday loop and helps me feel in control again, even with ADHD energy all over the place. In Kaizen, you start dumping everything that is in your head into one place, every task, every worry, every idea, like, oh, I need to remember this into one space so that your brain doesn't have to hold it all then instead of trying to do 20 things you pick one daily highlight the thing that actually will make today a success if you complete it it's my favorite feature because it finally broke that like i did so much today but somehow nothing counts feeling and it makes you feel accomplished and fulfilled every single day on top of that there is a simply weekly review that automatically shows you the categories of tasks you spend most of your time for and how you did compared to last week and it gives you feedback on how to improve next week so that you can see progress and improve each week when you get kaizen you also get lifetime access to our discord community where you can connect with other like-minded people and also with me and build other strategies so your life feels meaningful not just busy if that sounds like the kind of support that you've been missing and you also want to support the channel check out reallyohama.com there's also a link in description below to kaizen system thank you for supporting and when researchers in munich compared tiktok youtube twitter and just resting only tiktok caused big drop in prospective memory from about 80 accuracy to basically a coin flip they think it's the combination of rapid context switching and highly engaging videos. So think about it. Twitter also has rapid context switching, but it's mostly text. YouTube has video, but it's less switching unless you're using shorts. But TikTok has actually both rapid switching and highly engaging video. And it's that combination that makes it uniquely damaging to your brain. And on top of that, most of short form content is actually encouraging you to stop. thinking entirely. Because most short-form content gives you only the conclusion. In a 30 second or 60 second video, there's not enough time to follow someone else's reasoning. You don't really get the chain of thought, the why, the how, you just get the take. When you only consume conclusions, you're not really thinking. You're essentially collecting other people's takes instead of building your own understanding. For example, compare this to reading a book. When you read, you follow the author's chain of thought, page by page, argument by argument, and you're brain is doing the work alongside of the authors. It is basically a mental workout. You are training yourself to think, to focus, and to hold complex ideas and wrestle with them. But the content that requires thinking creates friction. And if it creates friction, it means you will leave. And the platforms don't want you to do that. So they optimize thinking out of the equation completely. Think about, for example, how old television worked. I'm not saying that old television is way better, but... is actually better in the sense you know when you watch something you form your own reaction maybe you discuss it later with your friends or with your family but your interpretation was yours first obviously there's some manipulation on tv as well i'm not going to get into that part but when you compare it to your social media at least you were interpreting it on your own first but social media flips this you see the content and the social response at the same time you know something has like 50k likes before you even finish the video and how many of you guys are reading comments right now while listening to this video and seeing these comments like top comments framing the take before you have had a chance to form your own and this changes actually two things first it changes what you think because conformity bias kicks in when you see thousands of people reacting a certain way you are pulled that reaction. You adopt their frame before you have built your own. And second, and more importantly, it changes whether you think at all. The interpretive work is already done for you. The crowd has already decided what this means. So why bother forming your own view when the consensus is right there? So this mechanism actually controls whether you think at all. And not only that, the algorithm rewards engagement, and that is the metric that matters most. right and when we think about engagement what drives it the most it's strong emotions and the strongest emotion is anger and outrage so the content starts to evolve towards provocation rage bait hot takes controversy and anything that makes you feel right now whether it's accurate or thoughtful and content that requires patience gets quietly punished and content that triggers instant emotions get rewarded by views and likes and this is not just being like creators bad people also trying to hook you in but this is basically natural selection the algorithm is the environment content that survives the environment that gets engagement and over time the entire ecosystem shifts the most emotionally triggering content wins and everyone else slowly dies that's why a lot of only fans creators are popping up on our feeds because they're creating this outrage and people are engaging with it so the algorithm favors them and this is essentially the machinery of addiction and It's literally running in your pocket right now. But understanding how it works is one thing. The question is, what is actually doing to us? I want you to think about yourself for a second. When was the last time you spent a day without checking your phone or maybe went to a dinner and... haven't even like checked your phone during the meal. When was the last time you read a book without getting distracted? Or when was the last time that you watched a movie without checking your phone or doing something simultaneously? I used to think actually I was immune to brain rot because I'm an avid reader and I read like more than 50 books a year and I always hated short form. So I was thinking it would not affect me because I hate the format. But I recently noticed that the way that the interface has changed even on YouTube is encouraging more and more for me to short form even though I'm not really enjoying it. It's kind of like making it impossible for me to choose long-form videos and recently I noticed that I'm struggling to go through books and sustain my attention or not get bored in the middle of it and even walking outside has become so boring that I need to watch something or literally run so that the scenery like the real-life scenery of mine like in front of my eyes changes faster and I catch myself way more often these days to just check and scroll even though there are nothing that I actually need to check. And I started wondering, like, when did this exactly happen? Because short form is not necessarily new. It's been always there. And in TikTok's internal documents, they literally admit that the compulsive usage correlates with a slew of negative mental health effects like loss of analytical skills, memory formation, contextual thinking, conversational depth, empathy, increased anxiety. They know all these negative effects that it has on youth, but they still choose. to do it anyway because it profits the company and some people develop what psychologists calls an hedonia where ordinary activities just do not bring pleasure anymore the baseline for stimulation keeps rising that nothing feels exciting or rewarding anymore outside of our phone and when this happens to millions of people at the same time it stops being a individual level of change but actually our society changes as well we start expecting conclusions without reasoning we outsource judgment to crowd we look at social media and look at debates and whoever has the best view whoever has the more views or more likes seems to be more legitimate we lose tolerance for cognitive effort look at like how public conversations work right now the complex issues get flattened into two takes and clips of short forms and nuance gets punished so everyone is coming to a one single conclusion when in reality truth is always way more complex than that and whoever has the most engaging framing wins regardless of the truth. So we do not debate ideas anymore, but we just perform reactions. And when the environment makes deep thinking unnecessary, the skill of independent interpretation quietly fades. And a population that cannot think deeply is easier to manipulate and harder to organize, less capable of sustained reasoning about anything that matters. You can literally see this in the culture too. Right? Like think about the Lububus or Dubai chocolate, Stanley cups or skibbity toilet or whatever that is. Like these are not just like random trends. When you go to a different country, even if the language is different, the same trends are happening at the same time. Not because we're discovering all of them like individually, but the algorithm is pushing it and discovering what content creates most engagement and it pushes to the whole world. And humor has changed as well. Think about like the 6-7. Like what is funny about it? The fast reference dance absorbs build on pattern recognition instead of setup and pay off and the brain rot humor older generations don't understand is optimized for this environment short punchy and instant and actually it's not that only short form long-form content is also infected a 20 minute mr beast style video can be worse for deep thinking than a slower three minute video because that the way that this like constant engagement style videos are created with like the constant cuts and effects are not allowing you to pause and think this constant escalation no dead time and creators literally telling you how to feel with pre-digested reactions are not allowing you to form your own reactions and form your own thinking so short form is not just a format anymore it's became a whole philosophy and It's colonizing everything. Okay, so let's talk about like what we can do about this, right? But I want to be completely honest about this. Knowing all of this and being more aware will obviously put you in one step ahead. But that's not enough. Like even for me... I knew all of these effects. I knew how it's bad for my brain, but I still get in the slippery slope. I literally have like an app blocker on my phone that blocks all social media on my phone during my work hours as well as after 10 p.m. so that I don't doom scroll on my phone. But there was like one time that, I don't know, there was like a bug or something in the app that didn't really block the app itself. And I found myself scrolling for seven hours on YouTube shorts for no reason. So even though I was aware of it and even I was like blocking my social media every day I didn't really develop the strength to not really click on that short and essentially quit and hold myself back. This is like the proof that awareness alone cannot really compete with the environmental design because you're up against thousands of engineers, billions of dollars and years of iteration on how do we keep you here a little longer. So your prefrontal cortex is not going to win against this war just by being more aware. So what can we do about this? The principle is that willpower is not like the in the equation they are designing platforms to beat your willpower we have to change the environment and create an environment that we don't need to rely on our willpower and some of the ways that i really like is obviously using an app blocker but giving the password to unlock that block to your friend or to your family and every time you ask for that password you have to pay for them you can also turn this into a game where you where you actually compete with your friends and you can also make sure that they keep you accountable by paying them every time you fail so that it turns into a mini competition and it becomes more fun to consume less social media altogether. And another thing is that don't use social media on your phone. Use it rather on a PC or on TV, I don't know. Because I feel like when I'm in the bed at night and when there is a phone in my head, my whole willpower, my whole chain of thoughts in my brain just disappear. Even though I always tell myself no phone in the bed, I always do it. So I think like deleting it from your phone and using it only on the computer. is one of the best ways because the the app itself and the feed itself is not designed and optimized for pc so at least for now pcs are a little bit better than phones the another thing is that deviponize platforms you actually need. There are some extensions to block the parts of the platform that you don't like. For example, like for PC, you can use Unhook for YouTube where you can hide shorts or hide recommendations or hide comments unless you choose to see them so that you don't get these social biases. And you can watch what you intended to watch, not just what the algorithm is trying to push you. And obviously, the skill that we need to build is building the focus muscle. The great thing about it is that we have neuroplasticity in our brain, which means that we have the ability to repair the damage that we've made but also make it worse as well. So it all depends on how you're using your brain. So we have to also rely on that as well and actually deepen our ability to focus. And one of the best ways is in my opinion by reading books. Not just like summaries of the books or watching a video about the book but actually reading the book. And one of the hacks that I highly recommend if you're struggling with reading or if you're a slow reader is have the book in front of you, ideally a physical one, and also listen to the audiobook. at the same time. So if you do that, the pace of reading becomes way easier and when your focus struggles, the audiobook is keep continuing. So I find it way easier to read books in that way. And when you're reading books, the goal is not to read as much as you can, but the goal is to understand what the author is trying to convey and what you think about and whether you agree or not agree and why. And literally go through the exercise of thinking alongside of the author. And another thing that I'm trying to do but I always fail is that not reading the comments before i watch the content whenever i'm scrolling on youtube i like to watch the video while i'm reading on the com reading the comments it just like literally changes how you perceive the content because sometimes i think i look at the review i'm like oh this is such a cool tool that i want to use and someone says like oh this is like blah blah this is this and suddenly my worldview changes to oh is it so I'm trying to always form my opinions before I open the comments and then I read it to see what other people are saying. And finally, I feel like this is one of the most important things is that curate deliberately. Now, you have to follow creators who show their reasoning, not just their conclusions. And even though obviously it's way boring to, I think, watch like a 20-30 minute video of a creator that is explaining a simple conclusion, it's actually important to follow their... thought processes and why they think that way. Instead of just trying to reach that information, we have to understand how they came to that conclusion. Because while you're following their chain of thought, you might realize that you come to a completely different conclusion and that's what actually makes you learn and grow. So look for the creators who leave breathing room in their edits, like me, or they have longer and more deep dive videos rather than just simple conclusions, like me. But, you know, I also want to be clear that these are individual changes to a systematic problem. They definitely help, but they still ask you to swim against the current of platforms that are financially rewarded for keeping you hooked. So the deeper fix that would be needed is obviously regulation that changes what these companies are allowed to optimize for and may be a limit to the features that they create depending on how it affects the user's mental health. But that is very unlikely to happen. right because it serves the economy so the best thing that we can do is protecting ourselves because they're not going to do it for us the most important skill that we need to protect is thinking for ourselves to form our opinions and to decide what actually matters for us our values and these systems are explicitly designed to capture your attention hold it control how you act how you behave what you react to and not your behavior and reaction to keep continuous crawling and protecting your agency requires more than awareness and good intentions We have to change the way that we surround ourselves with these mechanisms and build systems and build rules for ourselves as well as like apps and get support of these apps to control our attention. That is the real antidote to brain rot. If this is one of the dozens of videos that you watch today and you're thinking, man, I'm procrastinating. What the hell am I supposed, what the hell was I even supposed to do? Like, how am I going to get things done with this? and this amount of doom scrolling then i highly recommend you to check out this video where i talk about how to get so much done in 24 hours that it feels illegal it really changed my life as someone who's diagnosed with adhd and i'm sure it will help you to get more things done and control your focus and attention on the things that actually matters and if you found this video helpful please subscribe to this channel it actually helps the channel so much because when you subscribe you'll see more videos from me instead of just random skibbity brain rot content. See you.

😵 If you're tired of ending each day feeling like you did a lot but nothing actually mattered, My Kaizen System can help 👉🏻 https://ruriohama.com 
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⏰ Time Stamps: 
00:00 You're Not the Customer, You're the Product
01:06  Your Phone Is Literally a Slot Machine
02:22  What Swiping Actually Does to Your Brain
03:38  Kaizen System To Get Things Done
05:02 Why TikTok Is Worse Than Every Other Platform
05:36 Why You're Not Thinking Anymore 
07:41 Why Rage Bait Always Wins
08:45 Awareness Is Not Enough
10:10 Societal Consequences of Brain Rot
13:05 What You Can Actually Do
18:02 The One Skill You Need to Protect