Amanda L. Elton, PhD, with the McKnight Brain Institute of the University of Florida recently spoke with Women’s Health to explain what brain rot is and the role social media plays. Brain rot is a pretty graphic term, but don’t worry, your brain isn’t actually rotting, says Elton. Read the full article below to learn more.
In 2024, “brain rot” was the Oxford word of the year. They defined it 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.” So, basically, it’s a term that people online use to describe how social media makes their brains feel—and it’s not always good.
Like most social media terms, there isn’t one good definition of brain rot. Sometimes, it describes memes and slang (used in a sentence: “Skibidi toilet is brain rot,” according to TikTok), but other times, it speaks to perceived cognitive challenges that can come with overusing social media.
Brain rot is a pretty graphic term, but don’t worry, your brain isn’t actually rotting. Still, social media *can* impact how your noggin feels and functions, from your memory to your attention span.
Amanda Elton, PhD, Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Florida.
Ahead, experts explain how social media impacts your mind and how to reverse brain rot.
Here’s How Social Media Changes Your Brain
First, it’s important to note that there’s not much research out there about exactly what social media can do to your brain, particularly as it relates to brain rot. Overall, neuroscientists know that any activity—especially ones you do frequently—can make changes in your brain, says Elton, and social media is no exception.
Here’s what experts do know about how screen time changes your brain:
Social media uses the same neural muscles over and over.
Using social media frequently, especially at the expense of doing other kinds of activities like reading, working out, or doing a puzzle, uses the same neural muscles over and over instead of working new ones, says Gary Small, MD, a memory, brain, and aging expert and professor of psychiatry and biobehavioral sciences at University of California–Los Angeles.
“If you’re just looking at a social media feed that does not stimulate your mind and does not challenge you, it’s not going to be building any neural muscle,” says Dr. Small. (It’s kind of like skipping leg day, but for your brain.) Building that mental muscle is key to slowing cognitive decline, he adds.
This habit impacts moments when you’re not scrolling. If you’re using social media a lot and engaging with the short-form, non-challenging, and highly-stimulating content that dominates your feed, your brain could start to get used to those kinds of conditions, but struggle in others—like when it’s time to sit through a long presentation at work, for example.
It can shorten your attention span.
When you’re using tech, there are so many different alerts, beeps, and buzzes competing for—and ultimately winning—your attention. You might start on X, only to send a post to your friend via text, and then make your way to Instagram after you get a notification that your favorite influencer just started a live video.
“People are paying attention to what will give them novelty,” says Gloria Mark, PhD, an attention researcher at University of California, Irvine and author of Attention Span. It’s also what keeps you scrolling on social media, too. “We keep needing more and more novelty, and more shock value,” she says.
Couple this notification war with the fact that you’re able to access information extremely fast (you can even watch TikToks at double speed) and that your brain is constantly searching for the next fun thing, and you get a dwindling attention span.
It can keep you from making memories.
“Similarly, social media might make it harder for you to remember things. The biggest reason why is that when you’re distracted by social media and not paying attention, things aren’t getting encoded in your long-term memory. So, if you’re replying to a text while listening to a friend tell a story, you might not fully grasp it because your attention is divided in two places.
Amanda Elton, PhD, Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Florida.
Plus, social media and technology might also decrease the incentive for your brain to remember things in the first place, since you can always go and look for something, she says. For instance, you don’t need to commit someone’s birthday to memory anymore because Facebook will just remind you.
It can cause your brain to feel foggy.
“When we engage in these apps too much, it really has this kind of a numbing effect,” says Dr. Small. There isn’t a lot of neural activity happening. That’s why it feels so good in the moment to veg out and scroll Instagram while you watch The Real Housewives, but afterwards, that numbness might persist for a little while.
Plus, the other physical symptoms that technology can cause—like eye strain, neck strain, and headaches—can play a role in making your brain feel foggy, Dr. Small says.
How To Prevent—Or Reverse—Brain Rot
So, no, Gen Z and Gen Alpha aren’t totally off-base with this term. Whether you feel like you’re experiencing brain rot or you’re just trying to prevent it, experts say that any sort of cognitive changes you might feel from social media are reversible.
In fact, in research Dr. Small did in 2014, after five days at a nature camp with no technology, a group of 13-year-olds saw improvements in social and emotional intelligence, something that can also decline with too much social media use. “To me, that’s good news, that it’s not permanent brain damage,” says Dr. Small.
Here’s how experts would treat and prevent brain rot:
Set time limits on social media.
If you don’t want to deal with the side effects from too much social media use, you’ll have to—you guessed it—use it less. The right time limit will vary depending on the person, says Mark, but she likes to only open up social media before a meeting or another obligation with a set time, so that she can’t get stuck scrolling for hours. You can try deleting the apps entirely or only having certain times or devices that you check them on—whatever works best for you.
Let your mind rest, especially in nature.
Taking social media and technology breaks can definitely make a difference in how your head feels, says Mark. (Just like the teens from Dr. Small’s study.) Even if you can’t take a few days off from tech (due to work or another obligation), try getting outside, even for just 20 minutes. Outdoor time can make a big impact on how your brain functions, says Mark.
Turn to more challenging long-form content.
This practice will help retrain your brain’s attention span and deep processing because you’re stimulating the muscles required for those functions. You don’t even have to give up scrolling; instead of flipping through social media, try scrolling through a long-read article. (Women’s Health has plenty of useful and juicy stories!) But books, essays, and poems do the trick too.
Remember: Your brain isn’t actually rotting, even if social media makes it feel that way! You have the power to reverse any of the side effects you might be feeling.
Read the full article from Women’s Health Magazine.