As I gear up to teach a summer course on the Sociology of TikTok, I'm thinking about questions to ask students to characterize TikTok and describe how and why they use it. I'm reminded of something a student said in a different course when we talked about TikTok and social media use. The student, Luke, looked up during the conversation and said: "Brain rot." It stuck with me.
Fun fact: Brain rot was the Oxford word of the year in 2024, defined 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”.
An article on Yahoo notes: "The term comes from the idea that the internet is “rotting” the brains of frequent users who are “extremely online” or “chronically online,” leading them to reference memes and slang terms that aren’t typically used offline — and they're doing it a lot."
Interesting. I don't know if my brain is rotting, or if it already rotted from many decades of watching television. As a Gen X person who uses TikTok, maybe I'm a couch potato with brain rot. I will admit that my hand hurts from holding my phone too much. I check too many things too much of the time: email, social media, the news. The phone makes it so easy. Earlier this morning I did yoga. I go to the gym 2-3 times a week. I go on 45-minute walks with my wife. I have a job. But I still have many hours in the day to look at things on my phone. I look at recipes. I watch sports highlights. I see videos of people playing Van Halen guitar riffs. Recently footage of 70-year-old David Lee Roth in tight pants kind of singing Van Halen songs made it onto my feed. It's fine. I like short form videos as part of my information and entertainment mix. TikTok knows I like baseball, so I see MLB highlights. Once in a while the song from This Week in Baseball shows up for me (it makes me happy). I like to keep up with things...I learn Gen Z slang from my Gen Z kids but also from TikTok. When I began hearing the name Mel Robbins I was easily able to find out who that is from TikTok. It's byte size information, pretty easily digestible. I also consume some of my news on TikTok and watch videos about politics. And TikTok knows I'm interested in a variety of social issues, so I'm presented with informative videos like this one about gender, politics, and marriage and this one with data points about life satisfaction and age. If I want my students to think about child labor laws in the present, then TikTok is a pretty good place to start. If I want students to consider arguments in favor of banning TikTok, then TikTok offers one way to do so. Ultimately, I'm pro TikTok. I appreciate its availability for a range of serious, semi-serious, and unserious purposes. Not the first such platform, and not the last.
One more thought: I think last year I read more books than in any other year of my adulthood. Is reading books a countervailing force to social media brain rot?