A recent study by the American Psychological Association shows that excessive use of TikTok and Instagram Reels affects cognitive performance and can lead to “brain rot”.
TikTok PHOTO: Shutterstock
Data collected from around 98,000 participants in 71 studies showed that the more short-lived content a person watches, the poorer their cognitive performance in terms of attention, which means it’s harder for them to focus.
Short-form content is most often found on platforms like TikTok and Instagram.
The researchers found that “repeated exposure to highly stimulating and fast-paced content can contribute to habituation, where users become desensitized to slower, more difficult cognitive tasks such as reading, problem solving, or deep learning.” In other words, the researchers concluded that this may contribute to the degradation of the brain, notes Mediafax.
What does “brain rot” mean?
The concept of brain rot is defined by the Oxford Dictionary as “the alleged deterioration of a person’s mental or intellectual state, considered especially as a result of excessive consumption of material (currently, especially online content) considered banal or unchallenging”.
The study also highlighted the negative impact on mental health, including increased stress and anxiety, in the context of consuming such video content.
“It has been suggested that the continuous cycle of scrolling through and receiving new, emotionally stimulating content triggers the release of dopamine, creating a reinforcing loop that contributes to the formation of habitual usage patterns and greater emotional dependence on digital interactions,” the researchers said.
Researchers are worried
The study’s findings are not a first in this field, and it is not the first time researchers have expressed concern about cognitive decline in the digital age.
A large-scale study on the impact of AI on cognitive function, conducted at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MTI), found that students who used ChatGPT to write an essay not only showed significantly less brain activity, but were also unable to remember a single sentence of the written text.
