Please don't let your brain rot

If you're someone who knows me personally or has, over the years, been lurking and following this blog for a while, you would know that I've been working on using my phone less. I've made attempts to Cut Out Phone Addiction to reduce my phone screen time and even (Semi) Quit Social Media.

I'd say that some of the impacts of my attempts are pretty long-lasting. No, my phone's average screen time is not below 1 hour per day - which is unrealistic because I am now in a long-distance relationship with my family so I use my phone to call them on video. But at least I'm more aware when I need to scale back on using my phone.

Recently, I came across a video by Howtown called "What the actual science says about 'brain rot'":

It intrigued me, because I feel like I know personally the impact doom-scrolling has on my self, but it's good (?) to know that the impact of it is being studied by researchers given that the technology is pretty new and constantly evolving.

Some of the things I've learned from the video are pretty illuminating. I highly recommend watching it on your own but the following are a summary of studies and themes discussed in the video, interspersed with personal opinions of mine. It has refreshed my memory on some of the things I learned during both consumer behaviour psychology and cognitive psychology modules back in my uni days.

Fun fact: I do have a bachelor's degree in psychology. SHOCKING!

A major thing that was put into words for me was that algorithm (personalisation and automation) limits user agency. It's kinda annoying when a random stranger tells you what to watch next or what to read next when you didn't solicit their help or advice, so why is it okay when an algorithm does it? And with the algorithmic feeds you're never watching what you want, but what's put in front of you which the apps think you want based on the things you've engaged with (long watch time, liked, commented, re-shared, retweeted, etc). And sometimes you get rage-baited, and then you comment on stuff, and then you keep seeing the things you hate because you commented on it. It's a never ending cycle!

These days, because of the rise in algorithm in EVERYTHING, it's a little difficult to discern between something you truly like and something you think you might like because it was recommended to you based on your past behaviour on an app.

I had to ask myself recently (in the spirit of the new year and all that fun, life-changing magic of change in time):

What do I actually enjoy? What do I really want out of this one, short lifetime that I get?

It's so easy to be influenced. Back before a powerful mini computer was placed into our pockets, we had the television with it's very generic ads placed between emotional scenes of very emotional dramas (I wrote a whole paper about this. The gist: ads are more impactful when viewers are already emotionally aroused). Nowadays we have targetted ads placed between the short-form videos that constantly arouse us emotionally. The art of persuasion just got an upgrade!

Aside from having an algorithm that tells you what you want, what exactly is the impact of watching short-form videos back-to-back (other than the loss of precious time to do literally anything else)?

Well, apparently, increased short-form video consumption has been associated with poorer cognition, which includes attention and inhibitory control (Nguyen et al., 2025). Of course, as we know, correlation does not necessarily mean causation.

Some might argue, doesn't it also depend on what you're watching? No, it really doesn't matter (Jiang and Ma, 2024). Scientists in Beijing ran experiments where students had to answer tricky questions after either reading or watching tiktok. Of course the ones who watched Tiktok scored worse.

Then they experimented again with different conditions such as watching cute animals vs science experiments, and swiping allowed vs watching everything in a long compilation video. It didn't matter the subject material of the videos, what mattered was how they watched the videos. Being able to swipe worsened the scores of subjects vs those who watched them in a long, compilation-style video.

I'm guessing it has to do with the function of boredom, and that swiping means you're constantly needing to entertain your brain which requires a lot of cognitive resources to process. That's probably very tiring for the brain, that it can't get off autopilot to process and answer tricky questions.

I know when I end up scrolling on social media, it's never conscious. To me, it's a mindless behaviour because I'm never really thinking about it. But I'm pretty sure a lot of processing is still happening because every content you consume and react to, you're using significant cognitive resources to process the content and dealing with the emotional arousal that come from watching a corpus of content in quick succession.

Speaking of consuming cognitive resources, another effect of watching short-form videos is the negative impact it has on prospective memory, which is when you remember to do something you intended to do.

God, the AMOUNT OF TIMES I go on Instagram because I want to post a story or just to reply to a message and end up not doing either but fall into the black hole of doom-scrolling reels. I know! The devil! It's just easier not to have the app, honestly.

A study was conducted in Germany by Chiossi et al. (2023) and then replicated in the UK by Barton and Smyth (2025). They asked a group of subjects to do 2 tasks: decide if a word is a real word or made up word, but press the letters Q, W, E if they see the words "Blue", "Purple" and "Green" respectively. They then had subjects take a 10-minute break where subjects either rested, scrolled twitter, watched a long youtube video or scrolled tiktok. Surprise, surprise, the one that scored the worst in the QWE task (the 2nd intention) was the group that scrolled tiktok on their 10-minute break.

In short: If you had something in mind, you lose that thing the moment you scroll and watch short-form videos. Like intentionally walking through doorframes over and over again, for FUN!

I know I'm also part of the problem, because I try to create short-form content instead of crafting longer, more thoughtful content. I'm trying my best here (I mean this post is hitting more than 1,000 words, for sure). And I've kinda suspended my video-making endeavours just to rethink my intentions and purposes with it.

As Joss Fong mentioned on the video, I kept coming back to the idea of user agency as well. It's not enough to just pay attention, because if attention was money, we are all bankrupt right now. We need to start paying attention to what we pay attention to.

There is only so much energy we can expend, so much time we can dedicate in this lifetime. Why not invest these limited resources more meaningfully?

Besides, before the age of algorithmic decision, what did we do? We had conversations with our family, friends, and the people around us, about that very good korean drama we should all watch, and the sad book I read that I think my friend will like, or this funny youtuber a friend follows that she thinks I might enjoy too.

I think we can benefit from rediscovering what we like (especially for those of us who are no longer confined to the boundaries of standardised education) and go deeper into those subjects and/or topics, instead of letting, you know, a machine to tell you what you might enjoy next.

Resources mentioned:

“Feeds, feelings, and focus: A systematic review and meta-analysis examining the cognitive and mental health correlates of short-form video use” by Nguyen et al. Psychological Bulletin (2025)

“Swiping more, thinking less: Using TikTok hinders analytic thinking” by Jiang and Ma. CyberPsychology (2024)

“Short-form videos degrade our capacity to retain intentions: Effect of context switching on prospective memory” by Chiossi et al.  Proceedings of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (2023)

“Context-switching in short-form videos: What is the impact on prospective memory?” by Barton and Smyth. Memory (2025)