Ever experienced opening your phone for a specific task and ending up scrolling through your Instagram or watching reels mindlessly, completely forgetting what you picked it up for in the first place. This is a scenario which we all can relate to and elucidates the grip that our devices have on our attention. Undoubtedly, we all have, in varying degree, fallen prey to the precarious condition called brain rot- the Oxford word of the year 2024.
Source- Forbes
Oxford word of the year
Oxford University Press has announced ‘brain rot’ as the Oxford word of the year 2024. The word was decided after a lot of discussions followed by 37,000 public votes from a shortlist of six words compiled by Oxford University. The other words in the shortlist were dynamic pricing, lore, romantasy, slop, and demure.
Looking back at the Oxford Word of the Year over the past few years, we can trace how society is evolving and the increased perpetuation of virtual culture into our daily lives, defining every aspect of who we are and what we discuss. Last year, the honor went to ‘rizz,’ a Gen-Z slang abbreviation for charisma. In 2022, it was ‘goblin mode’—a t term describing being unapologetically narcissistic, lazy, or greedy. And during the Covid period of vaccination, the word of the year was vax, an abbreviation for vaccination.
Meaning
Brain rot means the deterioration of a person’s intellectual or mental state because of overconsumption of trivial, insignificant, or unchallenging material online. The term was selected based on the concern of increased consumption of low-quality content in the past few years.
While it may appear that it is a Gen-Z word, the word has a historic usage. It was first used in David Thoreau’s Walden, published in 1854. Fast forward to today, the word has found renewed traction by Gen-Z and Alpha Gen-Z through social media. The irony is striking as they have popularized the word through the platform often blamed for causing it.
Source – CartoonStock
Negative effects
We all are guilty of meaningless scrolling through copious amounts of cheap and pointless content. It is more of a guilty pleasure for us. But we do not consider the fact that it is affecting our mental health. Too much engagement with non-challenging and trivial content may curtail our critical thinking ability, causing us to be more dependent on the technologies, incapable of generating new ideas or thoughts. It may cause the dependence of a person on technologies even for the simpler tasks. For instance, children using calculators even for solving simple mathematical questions.
It becomes very pertinent for us to realize how the digital age is affecting our lives. It may have its benefits, but we should not allow the negative effects to take a toll on us.
