Focal Points
STUDY: TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube Shorts Induce Measurable “Brain Rot”
Nicolas Hulscher, MPH
In 2024, “brain rot” went from an online meme to the Oxford Word of the Year.
Doomscrolling, zombie scrolling, and dopamine-driven streams of low-quality content are producing measurable cognitive impairment across an entire generation.
‘Brain rot’ is 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.”
Our experts noticed that ‘brain rot’ gained new prominence this year as a term used to capture concerns about the impact of consuming excessive amounts of low-quality online content, especially on social media. The term increased in usage frequency by 230% between 2023 and 2024.
The first recorded use of ‘brain rot’ was found in 1854 in Henry David Thoreau’s book Walden, which reports his experiences of living a simple lifestyle in the natural world. As part of his conclusions, Thoreau criticizes society’s tendency to devalue complex ideas, or those that can be interpreted in multiple ways, in favour of simple ones, and sees this as indicative of a general decline in mental and intellectual effort: “While England endeavours to cure the potato rot, will not any endeavour to cure the brain-rot – which prevails so much more widely and fatally?”
Now, a peer-reviewed paper titled, Demystifying the New Dilemma of Brain Rot in the Digital Era: A Review, confirms that brain rot is real: the digital environment is chemically, cognitively, and psychologically degrading the developing human brain. And the damage is measurable.
According to the study, brain rot isn’t a meme. It’s a documented state of cognitive atrophy, driven by overstimulation, dopamine feedback loops, and nonstop exposure to low-quality digital content.
The authors conducted a rapid review, systematically analyzing 381 studies, filtering to 35 high-quality papers published between 2023–2024. Here’s what they found:
The Core Mechanism: Overstimulation + Dopamine Feedback Loops
The review shows that young people now average 6.5 hours per day online — primarily on algorithm-driven platforms like TikTok, Instagram Reels, YouTube Shorts, and endless-scroll feeds engineered for split-second novelty.
Most of the content involves rapid, low-information stimuli: ultrashort videos, memes, reaction clips, and trivial entertainment fragments that provide novelty without cognitive substance.
These platforms deliver rapid bursts of artificially rewarding stimuli, creating a cycle of:
- Constant cognitive overstimulation
The brain never enters a “rest” mode or deeper thought state.
- Weakening of working memory
Information is consumed too quickly to be consolidated.
- Fragmented attention networks
Short-form content trains the mind to expect constant novelty.
- Difficulty processing long or complex information
Deep reading and sustained focus become neurologically harder.
- Mental fatigue & reduced executive function
Chronic overstimulation taxes the prefrontal cortex — the center of planning, reasoning, and self-regulation.
The study describes this as a shift from healthy, top-down cognitive control to bottom-up, dopamine-seeking impulsivity.
Doomscrolling: Chronic Exposure to Negative, Threatening, or Grotesque Content
Many people casually use the term, but the study provides a precise functional definition:
Doomscrolling = the compulsive consumption of emotionally negative or threat-based content.
Doomscrolling produces:
- Persistent anxiety and hypervigilance
The brain remains locked in a threat-detection mode. - Rumination loops
Negative information gets replayed mentally. - Physiological stress responses
Chronic cortisol elevation impairs cognition. - Reduced memory formation
Stress disrupts hippocampal consolidation. - Attentional fragmentation
The brain becomes primed for scanning, not focusing.
According to the review, doomscrolling directly impairs working memory, emotional regulation, and sustained attention, accelerating cognitive wear-and-tear.
Zombie Scrolling: The Dissociative “Mindless Drift” That Damages Cognition
Doomscrolling is emotionally intense. Zombie scrolling is emotionally empty.
Zombie scrolling = passive, intentionless, dissociative swiping through content with no goal, awareness, or engagement.
Zombie scrolling is associated with:
- Dissociation
The mind drifts, reducing present-moment awareness. - Working-memory depletion
Mindless consumption offers no cognitive stimulation. - Reduced attentional control
The brain becomes conditioned to effortless, low-value input. - Emotional numbing & detachment
Pleasure/reward pathways become desensitized. - Diminished cognitive engagement
The brain stops initiating deeper thought patterns.
The review notes that zombie scrolling may be even more insidious because users don’t feel stressed, so they underestimate the damage — yet the cognitive decline accumulates quietly over time.
Preclinical Dementia Signatures Are Appearing in Younger Generations
A striking findings of the review is that digital-era cognitive decline now mirrors several early dementia–like neurobiological patterns. Across neuroimaging and behavioral studies, excessive digital exposure is linked to reduced hippocampal engagement, producing shallow, fragmented memory formation rather than durable consolidation.
At the same time, prefrontal cortex function—which governs planning, inhibition, and decision-making—shows measurable degradation under chronic multitasking and rapid-fire media input.
This constant overstimulation imposes a chronic cognitive load on the neocortex, creating patterns consistent with accelerated cognitive aging. Notably, several longitudinal findings suggest an elevated lifetime risk of cognitive decline, indicating these effects may not be transient. These changes are well-documented through fMRI and controlled studies included in the review, demonstrating that preclinical neurodegenerative signatures are already emerging in younger populations.
Brain Rot: A Real Neurocognitive Syndrome
The study shows a clear, repeatable pattern: excessive digital exposure to low-quality content degrades working memory, sustained attention, executive function, problem-solving, and emotional regulation. Constant notifications and rapid content switching impair information holding and focus, while overstimulation weakens planning, self-control, and cognitive flexibility.
Both doomscrolling’s emotional overload and zombie scrolling’s emotional emptiness destabilize the central nervous system, producing a more rigid, impulsive, and cognitively inefficient brain. Adolescents exhibit the most severe deficits, underscoring the risk of long-term impact.
The evidence confirms brain rot is a real, emerging early, accelerating quickly, and consuming a generation.
This is one of the core reasons why cognitive disability is now a public health concern in the United States. Cognitive impairment is skyrocketing with no end in sight:
|
Widespread cognitive decline before adulthood may soon become the norm as AI-generated “brain rot” content begins to drastically proliferate.
Epidemiologist and Foundation Administrator, McCullough Foundation
Support our mission: mcculloughfnd.org
Please consider following both the McCullough Foundation and my personal account on X (formerly Twitter) for further content.
FOCAL POINTS (Courageous Discourse) is a reader-supported publication.
To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
Courageous Discourse
No Exit Wound – EITHER there was a very public “miracle” OR Charlie Kirk’s murder is not as it appears
By John Leake
Turning Point Spokesman: “No Exit Wound a Miracle”
Charlie Kirk Show producer Andrew Kolvet repeats extremely dubious claim purportedly made by “the surgeon who operated on Kirk.”
Monday Blaze Media (relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey) reported the following:
Turning Point USA spokesman and executive producer of the “Charlie Kirk Show” Andrew Kolvet revealed new details about the shooting that even doctors are calling a miracle. According to Kolvet, the surgeon who operated on Kirk claimed that the high-velocity bullet was powerful enough to kill multiple large animals — and “should have gone through” his body. But for some reason, Kirk’s body was able to stop it.
“I want to address some of the discussion about the lack of an exit wound with Charlie,” Kolvet wrote in a post on X.
“The fact that there wasn’t an exit wound is probably another miracle, and I want people to know,” Kolvet continued, explaining that he had spoken with the surgeon who worked on Charlie in the hospital.
“He said the bullet ‘absolutely should have gone through, which is very very normal for a high powered, high velocity round. I’ve seen wounds from this caliber many times and they always just go through everything. This would have taken a moose or two down, an elk, etc,’” he recalled.
“But it didn’t go through. Charlie’s body stopped it,” he added.
When he mentioned to the doctor that there were “dozens of staff, students, and special guests standing directly behind Charlie” when he was shot, the doctor reportedly replied, “It was an absolute miracle that someone else didn’t get killed.”
“His bone was so healthy and the density was so so impressive that he’s like the man of steel,” Kolvet recalls the doctor saying.
This is not a credible statement, and it raises a number of concerns.
It strikes me as very perplexing that a “surgeon operated on Kirk,” because in the video of the shooting, Charlie reacted with a decorticate posture—that is, an abnormal body posture characterized by flexion of the upper limbs—caused by severe trauma to the central nervous system. This indicates that the bullet either directly struck his cervical spinal cord, or the shock wave of the supersonic bullet passing near his spinal cord traumatized it.
A 150-grain, .30-06 bullet’s energy at 150 yards from the muzzle varies by ammunition, but a common hunting cartridge has an estimated value of approximately 1,800-2,000 foot-pounds (with the bullet traveling at about 2500 feet per second). In other words, the .30 caliber (.30 inch diameter) metal projectile struck his neck with sufficient kinetic energy to move a 2,000 pound mass a linear distance of one foot.
If the bullet that struck Charlie’s cervical spinal cord was a .30-06 fired from 150 yards away, it would have:
1). Severed his spinal cord, killing him instantly.
2). Passed through his neck.
Note that the cervical vertebrae are supported by strong muscles and have high compressive strength, but are far too delicate to stop a .30-06 bullet traveling at 2,500 feet per second.
If ALL of the kinetic energy of the bullet was absorbed by Charlie’s neck, it would have done spectacular trauma to his neck, as distinct from producing the clean bullet hole visible in the video footage that ruptured his Carotid artery.
Though I appreciate that some may find a supernatural explanation to be consoling, it seems to me that the investigation should not rest on the this explanation.
As I wrote a few weeks ago: If I were investigating the murder, I would consider the hypothesis that Charlie was shot with a weapon equipped with a suppressor and loaded with a subsonic cartridge to further reduce the sound. I have seen footage of someone firing a rifle with this setup, and the shot was amazingly quiet. The effective range of such a weapon is about 100 yards or less, and the shooter must be very skilled.
However, such a setup could fire a subsonic projectile that would penetrate a human neck without passing through it. In this scenario, the actual assassin (firing the suppressed rifle) hypothetically coordinated the timing of his shot with someone else firing a normal (supersonic and loud) rifle cartridge into the air at the same time to create a distraction or red herring.
In a functioning society in which the people trust their authorities—including their medical examiners—it would be easy to discover what happened and to disclose at least a preliminary report that would satisfy most reasonable people. The trouble our Republic is facing now is that so many of us no longer trust our federal and state authorities to tell us the truth.
For example, we have strong grounds for suspecting that medical examiners are not diligently investigating (with the proper analytic methods) unexpected, fatal cardiac arrests in young people to determine if they were caused by vaccine-induced myocarditis.
Subscribe to FOCAL POINTS (Courageous Discourse).
For the full experience, upgrade your subscription.
Focal Points
Trump Walks Back His Tomahawk Tease from Zelensky
By John Leake
The President meets with the Ukrainian dictator but prudently declines to give him the long range missiles he seeks.
Yesterday, after seeing reports of Zelensky meeting with Raytheon executives before his scheduled meeting with President Trump at the White House, I wrote an essay expressing my dismay at how the President has—since he entered office eight months ago—walked back his campaign promise to end the war in Ukraine. Instead, he has recently made statements suggesting a willingness to escalate the war, most notably by giving Ukraine long range missiles that can be armed with nuclear warheads.
Some of my readers objected to my suggestion that the U.S. government’s relationship with Ukraine is now so corrupt that Zelensky could get the missiles he seeks without following proper legal procedures. They should consider that the U.S. government has sent billions of money and weapons to Ukraine—long ruled by a money-laundering oligarchy —without any accounting.
Now comes the news that President Trump walked back his Tomahawk tease in his meeting with Zelensky. As he put it:
That is why we are here. Tomahawks are very dangerous… It could mean escalation – a lot of bad things could happen. Hopefully we will be able to get this war over with without thinking about Tomahawks. I think we are pretty close to that.
We thank President Trump for his prudence and we hope he will continue on the same path of prudence.
Yesterday, our NATO partner Poland allowed the alleged Ukrainian lead perpetrator of the Nord Stream pipeline bombing to walk free. Such is the fantastically corrupt world in which we are now living.
The war in Ukraine is yet another species of globalist, criminal humbug that in no way serves the interests of the American people. Consider that, while we constantly hear about the “existential threat” of climate change from carbon emissions, there has been no talk in the media—including the hysterical “climate change” German media—about the fact that the Nord Stream sabotage released between 150 million and 300 million cubic meters of gas—the equivalent to roughly 5.3 to 11 billion cubic feet.
This was the largest single industrial release of natural gas, which is largely composed of methane, widely characterized as a potent “greenhouse gas.” Bill Gates is always prattling on about the need to get rid of cattle because the ruminants release methane. I haven’t heard him say a word about Nord Stream.
If I were President Trump, I would tell Zelensky the following:
1). You and your predecessors should have never listened to the idiot U.S. foreign policy establishment of my predecessors—an establishment that has ruined every country it has touched since Vietnam. Every single blowhard Neocon foreign policy wonk in this city is a total retard.
2). I am going to use my executive power—provided by the U.S. Constitution—to end the reckless and criminal foreign policies of my predecessors, including their insane policies with respect to Russia and Ukraine since the Cold War ended in 1991.
3). The United States has always maintained elections, even in wartime, and I was elected to end U.S. involvement in your war against Russia.
4). The American people I represent have no quarrel with the Russian people, and they therefore object to American weapons being used to kill Russians. To give you long range missiles to use against Russia would significantly elevate the risk of the Russians eventually using their long range missiles to strike American targets.
5). I am bound by my oath to uphold the U.S. Constitution to serve the American people, and not the interests of warring parties 5,000 miles away, on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean.
6). I will assist you in peace negotiations with the Russians, but I will not escalate this conflict in a gambit to extract better concessions from Russia. Such an escalation will only result in more needless death and destruction, and it risks spinning out of control—a scenario deemed to be unacceptably risky during the Cold War.
7). I intend to inaugurate a new era of friendship and cooperation between the U.S. and Russia, based on the interests of our people, and not the U.S. national security state and Military Industrial Complex that President Eisenhower warned about in 1961. This Establishment has doggedly maintained a state of enmity with Russia for its own selfish interests.
8). I will offer Russia numerous incentives to give Ukraine a fair deal in peace negotiations, but effective immediately, I am terminating all military aid to Ukraine, as well as all military intelligence and targeting assistance.
9). Here’s a $7,000 cash gift from me to you as private pals. Please stop by Anderson & Sheppard tailor in London on your way back to Kiev and get fitted for a suit. You look ridiculous in that silly outfit and you’ll need a suit for our Budapest summit with Vladimir.
Please subscribe to FOCAL POINTS (Courageous Discourse).
For the full experience, upgrade your subscription.
-
Carbon Tax9 hours agoCarney fails to undo Trudeau’s devastating energy policies
-
Censorship Industrial Complex2 days agoMove over Soviet Russia: UK Police Make 10,000 Arrests Over “Offensive” Online Speech
-
Digital ID2 days agoRoblox to Mandate Facial and ID Verification
-
Business5 hours agoBudget 2025: Ottawa Fakes a Pivot and Still Spends Like Trudeau
-
Alberta2 days agoAlberta bill would protect freedom of expression for doctors, nurses, other professionals
-
COVID-192 days agoFreedom Convoy protestor Evan Blackman convicted at retrial even after original trial judge deemed him a “peacemaker”
-
Daily Caller2 days agoBari Weiss Reportedly Planning To Blow Up Legacy Media Giant
-
Daily Caller2 days agoMTG Says She’s Resigning From Office








