HYDERABAD: Have you ever caught yourself scrolling through your phone endlessly only to realise your brain hasn’t absorbed anything? Have you ever tried to consciously reflect upon the content you consume only to realise that it doesn’t hold much meaning? Well, they have a term for that — ‘Brain Rot’ and after a shortlist of 6 words and 37,000 public votes, Oxford University Press has named it Word of the Year 2024. Oxford defines brain rot as “the supposed deterioration of a person’s mental or intellectual state, especially viewed as the result of overconsumption of material (now particularly online content) considered to be trivial or unchallenging.”
Is it concerning?
“Although it’s not medically recognised, it has been widely studied since the pandemic. It may seem harmless and something everybody does to kill boredom, but the existing literature calls it out as concerning,” says K Apuroop Chakravarthy, a senior counselling psychologist. He explained how it can be linked to the brain’s reward system.
Taking Instagram reels as an example, he said, “You watch a 9-second reel and you scroll up. Every time you scroll up, you are presented with a new reel (a new stimulus) and that causes your reward system to release dopamine. Now when there is a recurrent doom scrolling, over a period of time, it can reduce your ability to feel pleasure in the long run.”
Although the word has a negative perception psychologically, it’s interesting that most internet users don’t see it that way. Vidhi Bhattad, a 21-year-old internet user, said she perceives ‘Brain Rot’ as a positive term and even called doom scrolling a form of ‘Brain Yoga’.
She said, “It’s like brain yoga. Everything’s a mess, but somehow I feel better after it.” Reflecting on the content she consumes online, she added, “My brain clocks out the second I open Instagram or any such app. I’m not really consuming the content, I’m just looking at it and scrolling past it on a repeat mode.”
This could be seen as a result of internet or smartphone addiction. While you can always try setting a time limit on the usage of your phone or particular apps or a temporary digital detox, it is something that keeps coming back. Apuroop called it a behaviour rather than a habit. He said, “A habit is a repeated behaviour.
So if you find yourself doom scrolling, that is a behaviour. And this behaviour leads to pleasure or kills your boredom.” He explained that a long-term solution to this ‘behaviour’ is engaging in other activities that might yield the same result in your brain in terms of dopamine release. For instance, connecting with people in person, doing shared activities, or any form of movement (yoga, dance, workout) might help to break the habit.
Oxford identified the first recorded use of the term in Henry David Thoreau’s book Walden in 1854, with a small number of further occurrences in the nineteenth century. Despite finding its origin in the nineteenth century, Oxford has noted that the term has been widely used on social media this year.
As much as a 250% increase in frequency per million words between 2023 and 2024 was noted in their corpus. The list of other nominated words included demure, dynamic pricing, lore, romantasy, and slop.