Doomscrolling ...

Image by Getty/Futurism

Interesting piece in Futurism detailing doomscrolling, the digital equivalent of brain rot, is just another manifestation of what's happening on the net where instant gratification isn't fast enough. Consider YouTube when one is watching an interesting piece on the blues and an unwanted ad to the max pops up. Obnoxious without question but no matter, they keep coming, interrupting our concentration while increasing our anger, designed to entice us rubes to click on said ad and buy something we don't need but do it anyway based on whim or driven by reptilian response mechanisms buried deep within our mammalian brains. One sees this in kid's toons where overstimulation of the cortex, at the expense of actually being able to concentrate, is rendered moot by the light speed insanity of the toon in question. No wonder the young can't concentrate on anything thanks to the existence of the ubiquitous cell phone, the ultimate additive device, designed, in part, to separate money from us or, inadvertently designed to reduce our ability to think with any degree of sophistication 24/7.

To whit.

It turns out that the slang "brain rot" may not be an inaccurate description of what's actually going on in our domes while we endlessly scroll TikTok.

As Spanish newspaper El País reports, a growing body of scientific evidence over the past decade suggests that consuming mind-numbing content, from sources ranging from algorithmically driven social media junk to sensationalist news, can literally reduce the physical gray matter in our brains. That's along with wreaking other pernicious effects like shortened attention spans and weakened memory.

The nefarious thing? These symptoms are often by design. The most infamous example is the implementation of infinite scrolling in apps, which is intended to feed our compulsive desire to endlessly consume content, or "doomscroll."

It gets better.

The physical effects on the brain are perhaps the most alarming. In brain regions involved with decision-making, reward processing, and impulse control, Moshel's meta-analysis indicated that excessive internet use was linked with decreased gray matter volume.

"These changes reflect patterns observed in substance addictions," Moshel told El País, likening them to the toll of methamphetamines or alcohol.

So it may be time to put the phone down. If the rot hasn't fully taken hold yet, that is.

 

Image by Gordon Johnson from Pixabay