Brain rot

This year's term of the year, as chosen by the Oxford dictionary, is brain rot, in translation – brain rot. The term describes the deterioration of the human brain that has been exposed to trivial, uninspiring and unchallenging content for a long time. That's what happens when we spend time looking at content on Tik-Tok, videos and in general content on Instagram that doesn't concern us at all, but is colorful and distracts us from what we should be doing at that moment.

Expression putrefaction it is not accidental. Perhaps we would rather say that we are dumbing ourselves down with some content, but that is a more favorable activity for us. Dumbing down is similar to obesity and physical neglect. When a person decides to quit, he can return to a more or less decent condition by exercising and changing his diet. It's the same with the brain - if it's not used for a while, that is, if we're just "bleating", something can trigger us to start using the brain again and get it back in good shape.

There's no going back with rotting, that's the message. It is not a brain that has not been used, on the contrary, the brain is constantly active during the consumption of those trivial contents, you need to master all those changes of colors and rhythm, but there is no deeper and more challenging brain activity in that. Overexposure to trivial online content, they say, can lead to reduced attention span, mental fatigue and a decline in critical thinking skills.

By the way, the term was not recently coined, it has been around for 170 years, it was first used by Henry David Thoreau in his work Walden in order to criticize the decline of intellectual standards in society. But it had to wait until 2024 to be declared a key term, at least in the outgoing year.

There is no consensus among brain experts, primarily neurologists, about whether our brains are really rotting from Internet nonsense. There are those who think that it does not affect the brain so badly, maybe even stimulating, but it has no good application in non-digital life. Because there is a noticeable lack of concentration and patience among those who overload themselves with fast internet content, a constant need for some new incentive. But that's why they are extremely good at multitasking and information filtering. One would say yes brain rotters they find a needle in a haystack faster, but they don't have too many ideas what to do with that needle until they find a tutorial on YouTube.

That's the next thing; even those who dread Tik Tok trivia will say that the Internet can be a very useful and inspiring way to spend time if you attend quality online courses or lectures, that is, if you solve quizzes or play chess. Although they will mention that it is better to do it in the company of living people because it contributes to socialization, which is also important for brain development.

A serious problem is the mouse and keyboard, respectively touchscreen because they ask us to make very primitive instead of the fine movements we make when we write or draw with a pencil, pen or brush. The development of that precise motor skills also affects the development of our cognitive abilities, which can be threatened if we indulge in typing on the keyboard, even with two fingers.

Finally, can the million years of evolution that we went through to have this brain be undone in just one generation, and in fact only in the last ten years? Of course they can't, but they can be squandered, just as a family fortune built up over centuries is squandered. That's why it would brain waste that is, brain wasting might have been a much better term, it just lacked the drama necessary to point out a dangerous detour, not so much for humanity as for each of us individually. Because rot can be very fruitful for those who know how to use it.