IIf you want to witness the last vestiges of human intelligence swirling down the drain, just hold your nose and type these words:Skibidi toilet” to YouTube. The 11-second video features an animated human head sticking out of a toilet bowl while singing the gibberish lyrics, “Skibbidi dop dop yes yes.” The clip has been viewed more than 215 million times and generated hundreds of millions of references on TikTok and other social media.

It's only fitting, then, that the Oxford English Dictionary has announced “brain rot” as the word of the year. As an abstract concept, brain rot is something we are all vaguely aware of. The dictionary defines it as “an assumed mental or intellectual state of a person, especially seen as a result of overconsumption of material (now especially online content) considered trivial or unchallenging” is defined as “deterioration''. But few people realize how much technology is literally rotting our brains, and how compulsive internet use is destroying our gray matter.

Brain rot was foreshadowed about 20 years ago when scientists studied the effects of a new invention called “email,” specifically the effects of a relentless barrage of information on the brains of its participants. result? Continuous cognitive overload was more harmful than cannabis consumption, with participants' IQs dropping by an average of 10 points.

and this is before The advent of smartphones has made the internet so readily available that the average adult in the UK now spends at least 4 hours a day online (Gen Z men spend 5.5 hours online per day; Gen Z women spend 6.5 hours online).

In recent years, there has been a wealth of academic research from institutions such as Harvard Medical School, Oxford University, and King's College London. found the evidence What is the Internet? shrink our gray matter, shorten attention spanweakens memory and distorts cognitive processes. The areas of the brain found to be affected include “attentional capacity,” “memory processes,” and “social cognition” is included.

Paper after paper tells us how vulnerable we are to internet-induced brain rot. “High levels of internet use and heavy media multitasking are associated with decreased gray matter in the prefrontal cortex.” find one. People who are addicted to the Internetstructural changes in the brain” and “reduced gray [sic] Case” Some scholars even refer to the use of too much technology during the developing brain as “dangerous.”digital dementia”.

2018, 10 years of data Analyzed by a leading memory psychologist Researchers at Stanford University found that people who frequently use multiple online platforms have shorter memory and attention spans.

Yet we seem to be doing little to stem the tide. Earl Miller, a neuroscientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a world expert on divided attention, predicts that by 2022 we are currently living in a “perfect storm of cognitive decline.” I warned you. Dr. Gloria Mark, Professor of Information Studies, University of California, Author attention spanwe found evidence of how dramatically our ability to concentrate has declined. In 2004, her research team found that the average attention span on any screen is two and a half minutes. In 2012 it was 75 seconds. Six years ago, it was down to 47 seconds. “I think this is something that we should be very concerned about as a society,” she says. talked about it on the podcast In 2023.

But if technology is making us less intelligent, we are not entirely to blame. After all, it is designed to completely captivate us. Silicon Valley's dirtiest design feature, and once you find it, it's everywhere: infinite scroll. Likened to “”fartbottomless soup bowl” In an experiment, participants continued to eat from the soup bowl without thinking if they kept refilling it. Online feeds that are constantly “replenished” manipulate the brain’s dopaminergic reward system in a similar way. These powerful dopamine-driven endless “exploration” loops become addicted.

What happens if we fail to address cognitive decline? Tristan Harris, former Google design ethicist told the US Congress In 2019, billions of people, with a “psychological footprint roughly the size of Christianity,” now receive information from the platform, but the business model is such that “revenue is tied to attention.” “This creates a “race to the bottom of the brainstem.'' Hack our lizard brains to get attention, trigger dopamine, fear, anger, and win. ”

His warning is the most severe yet. “Persuasion technology is a hugely undervalued but powerful force shaping the world,” he said. “It controls the pen of human history, and if we don't take it back, it will destroy us.”

The term brain rot has been popularized online by young people most at risk of its effects. The fact that those most at risk are the most aware of the problem is encouraging news. The first step to change is understanding the problem. And there is reason to be hopeful. In recent years, teenagers have turned their attention to Danphones. Childhood without smartphones;Green is budding towards a future where we can reclaim our hearts. After all, perhaps Skibidi Toilet has a more poignant meaning, a recognition of where human intelligence currently stands. You can now proceed in one of two directions: upwards or through a U-bend.