On Brain Rot

Being born in 2000 feels like such a flex, especially being born right at the very end, like I was. I’m grateful to be part of the last group of kids who experienced life before technology was so pervasive.

Right in the middle of Gen Z, I’m the youngest of my siblings and cousins, so my early years were shaped by the media they loved. We watched plenty of TV—Nickelodeon, Cartoon Network, MTV, and movies we were probably way too young for—but we also read books, flipped through magazines, played instruments, got into music, played sports, and loved drawing. Using the computer meant asking for permission and hearing the unforgettable dial-up sounds every time we logged on. We hiked, camped, and spent whole days outside. We were touching grass long before it was a trend.

Maybe part of the privilege came from growing up in the South during a time that felt warmer, friendlier, and a lot more hopeful. Our community was so focused on children and family, and we were enriched in countless ways. But that culture of enrichment wasn’t unique to the South; many people my age remember growing up like that. The same is true for my siblings, cousins, and my Gen-Z friends, whether they’re older or younger than me. I genuinely believe the reason things feel different now is that back then, we used technology. Now, technology is using us.

Kids today seem doomed from birth, with a device handed to them almost the second they exit the womb—a kind of unconsented sabotage that is turning Gen Alpha into screen-addicted zombies. It’s clear from today’s teachers that students are struggling academically and socially. They’re spending more time alone than with friends, accumulating endless hours of screen time, and engaging with social media long before they have the emotional intelligence to handle it. They’re absorbing unhealthy beliefs from toxic online influencers, normalizing parasocial relationships, and becoming so overstimulated that real life feels boring in comparison.

I hate writing about this because it makes me feel like such a boomer. But I’m not; I’m only 23. People born after me can still remember a time when kids weren’t completely fried.

I understand why my views on raising kids might be dismissed since I’m not a parent, but as someone studying and working in technology, I’m deeply troubled by how the industry weaponizes addiction psychology against young people. It’s not a coincidence that apps are designed to be as stimulating as possible, that autoplay exists to keep you hooked, that infinite scroll prevents you from ever reaching a stopping point. These features aren’t there for convenience; they exist to maximize engagement at the cost of our attention spans and mental health.

Children are a prime target, especially those with detached or busy parents, whether because they have to work two full-time jobs just to make ends meet or because they’re affluent and simply don’t engage with their kids. I recognize there’s a significant difference between the two situations, but both sets of children become casualties of a deeply exploitative system.

Want an example? Go to the mall in 2024. Look at the food court. Everywhere, kids are sitting silently, faces glued to tablets or smartphones. When we were kids, the mall was where we went to hang out, get into trouble, kill time while our parents shopped. Now, kids just sit, slack-jawed and hypnotized, existing in the mall without engaging with it. The culture has totally shifted. I used to say that it baffled me, but now I recognize that it is completely by design.

And then there’s AI: the perfect storm to make this even worse. When Geoffrey Hinton, one of the godfathers of AI, resigned from Google and denounced his life’s work, that should have been a wake-up call. When the guy who helped build it is saying, “This has gone too far,” maybe we should listen. But will we? Or will we let Big Tech dismantle society for profit while pretending it’s “progress”? The industry has already proven it has no moral compass. We saw it with social media, we saw it with the rise of algorithmic radicalization, and we’re about to see it again with AI.

At the end of the day, parents are the last line of defense. If children are going to have anything resembling the kind of childhood we experienced, it’s going to require a deliberate, conscious effort. Technology isn’t inherently bad; what’s bad is the way it’s designed to replace real life instead of complementing it. There’s nothing wrong with kids enjoying games or watching YouTube, but at some point, we need to set boundaries.

Will the next generation have the chance to draw, hike, camp, play an instrument, fall off a bike and scrape their knees, get dirty, and actually touch grass? Or will they just be pacified by pixels, raised by algorithms, fed whatever content the highest bidder wants them to see?

I wish I could say I’m hopeful, but I’m not. I was a kid during the era of the ruthless, unforgiving internet—the 4chan internet, the lawless internet, the internet that drove people to suicide because of how cruel it was. And despite all the promises of a “safer” digital space, nothing has changed. They push politically correct messaging to make it seem like things are better, but the underlying systems remain just as exploitative, if not worse.

This issue needs to be addressed, and tech professionals have a responsibility to start that conversation. I constantly bring up “brain rot” because it’s not just a meme; it’s a real and deeply concerning phenomenon, and I see it playing out in real time. Yes, some parents are neglecting their kids, but many are just victims of a system that forces them to prioritize survival over presence. I don’t blame those parents at all.

But I do blame the industry that engineered this mess in the first place.

The truth is, we helped create the problem, but we also have the power to fix it. Yet, so many of us refuse to care. That needs to change.

Because if we don’t course-correct soon, we won’t just lose the internet.

We’ll lose an entire generation.

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Sources

1. Common Sense Media. (2024). What Are Kids Watching on Tablets? Parents. Retrieved from https://www.parents.com/what-are-kids-watching-on-tablets-11689876

2. ValuePenguin. (2024). Parents Admit to Judging Screen Time Limits. Parents. Retrieved from https://www.parents.com/parents-admit-to-judging-screen-time-limits-11686135

3. Warren, T. (2024). Turing Award Winners Warn Against Premature AI Deployment. The Verge. Retrieved from https://www.theverge.com/news/624485/turing-award-andrew-barto-richard-sutton-ai-dangers

4. JAMA Network Open. (2023). Association of Screen Time and Myopia in Children. Parents. Retrieved from https://www.parents.com/why-are-more-kids-getting-nearsighted-11688786

5. Wikipedia Contributors. (2024). Geoffrey Hinton. Wikipedia. Retrieved from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geoffrey_Hinton

Further Reading

• Carr, N. (2010). The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains. W. W. Norton & Company.

• Alter, A. (2017). Irresistible: The Rise of Addictive Technology and the Business of Keeping Us Hooked. Penguin Press.

• Lanier, J. (2018). Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now. Henry Holt and Co.

• Broussard, M. (2018). Artificial Unintelligence: How Computers Misunderstand the World. MIT Press.

• Newport, C. (2019). Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World. Portfolio.