About eight months ago, I noticed reading felt like wading through mud and music was boring. I felt overwhelmed, even when I had little to do. I was uninspired. It didn’t feel like depression, an old familiar friend, and trying to treat it like depression didn’t help.
I didn’t realize the root cause was too much social media until I decided to set some serious boundaries with my phone in a desperate attempt to change something.
Since 2023, I’ve paid my bills managing the social media accounts of a community college. It seems obvious now trawling the stage-5 enshittified internet for new ideas was gradually decaying my brain.
It was brain rot, not depression. “Brain rot” is a vague phrase, but maybe working off of vibes is appropriate. Sometimes, internet lingo is a silly kind of poetry. Though every reader may interpret it a little differently, it manages to touch on something universal.
For me, it’s a cerebral disconnect or haze, making me think “this brain is not the one I had last year” or “why is my brain obsessing over things I don’t actually care about” or “my brain cannot take in, remember, or engage with what I’d like it to.”
I know I’m not alone. While we’ve been talking about phone addiction for years, it seems like we’re hitting a point of collective exhaustion right now.
Alex Cooper, of the infamous podcast Call Your Daddy, released her episode Doomscrolling is Ruining Your Life in October this year detailing her own struggle with overstimulation (followed up by an ad for Shopify).
Olivia Unplugged, an anti-phone TikTok account with content by by the Opal screen time app, has gained nearly a quarter of a million followers since June 2025.
The terms “brain rot” and “doomscrolling” are at all time highs in GoogleTrends. Though it seems like doomscrolling peaked in 2020, searches for the term have increased 4x since that time, and brain rot had 1.2 million searches in the last month alone.
Endless Substack essays about people trying to get offline, as pointed out by this note that got a cackle out of me:
After all this time living with the downsides of social media, why are so many people suddenly trying to get off their phones?
I have a theory: social media feels worse than ever because of changes in the algorithm.
Platforms have changed from optimizing for number of engagements to optimizing for amount of time spent on the platform. They tell us (social media managers) the goal is make our audience hover over our posts for as long as possible. The most entrancing posts get the most reach.
The algorithm also pushes more and more content from strangers. Instead of making choices about what we see on our feeds, we consume what platforms think will keep us watching.
Scrolling past endless, disconnected short-form videos we barely retain and don’t act on beyond the occasional “share” feels like shit. After a scroll session, I used to think “well, it didn’t feel amazing, but I messaged my friends and learned something new”. Now, I get almost nothing out of time spent on social media.
If I had to guess, what causes digital brain rot is not one type of platform but categories of habits. It’s bad for our brain when we frequently engage anything with the passive compulsivity these platforms encourage.
It sucks, but is it too late to reverse widespread brain rot?
For a few years, professors have sounded the alarm that students—even those in elite colleges—struggle to read or comprehend longer texts. Those anecdotes are now confirmed by studies. James Marriott convincingly rounded up the data in his article “The dawn of the post-literate society,” sharing that literacy scores are down, and so are reasoning and problem-solving abilities.
Professors would swear Chat-GPT is the cause, and early research agrees too much Chat-GPT affects our thinking. Reports of brain-fog increasing since 2020 has also spawned a theory that our decline in cognition is the after-effects of COVID. Plus, depression and anxiety can suppress our executive function, including critical thinking. Those conditions have been on the rise in North America for years—a phenomena so multi-faceted, you can’t blame it on social media entirely.
And yet, social media seems like a huge factor, too. Research consistently shows social media makes us feel worse and affects our cognition, even if it’s not the only cause.
If we’re lucky, one day a government with the right incentives will put policy in place to suppress addictive features, break up tech monopolies, and give tech workers the power they need to push back against malicious business functions. More complicated than getting lead out of gas, but hopefully possible.
I like to hope legislation like what recently passed in California, which includes warning labels for social media and AI guardrails, will prove useful and build the movement for federal action (assuming, of course, optimism upon optimism, we find ourselves under more receptive national leadership).
In the meantime, we’re on our own.
How I reduced my own brain rot
Even if social media causes brain rot, just getting offline is not enough. It helps me to actively do things that are the opposite of scrolling. It rebuilds the brain-skills that have rotted in the time I wasted away on my phone.
I try to remind myself technology and the internet are not inherently evil. It’s how they’ve been wielded by those who try to profit off them.
If you relate to my rot, here’s what helped me:
Screen time apps
Skip the built-in app, it doesn’t work. I like Jomo. It’s $30 a year, women-owned, and run by a small team. The different options for managing screen time allow me to change it up when one method becomes too easy to unblock. I’ve also seen positive reviews of Brick, an RFID device that combines with an app on your phone to, well, brick it.
De-stimulation
Active sessions of not taking in media helps a lot. Sometimes I come home, turn off the lights, and just sit in the dark for ten minutes. I also recommend doing chores around the house or driving to work without listening to any content. Breath work or meditation helps. But the main thing is reducing input.
Sitting with density (& taking notes)
Lately, I’ve felt shame from opening a thick book and noticing it’s more challenging than it used to be to read. But if I avoid challenging media, one day I’ll realize I haven’t consumed anything more difficult than an episode of Emily in Paris in a decade. So I force myself to do it. Taking notes and making annotations also helps reverse the passivity encouraged by technology.
An e-ink device
Options for e-ink phones, tablets, and readers are on the rise. Getting an ereader helped me. As silly as it is, I think replacing one device (phone) with a healthier device (ereader) at my bedside helped my habits.
Extended breaks (& touching grass)
Taking an actual, significant break from my phone or my social media apps helps. Setting aside my phone for a full day, or deleting Instagram for a week can reset the dopamine cycle keeping me on my device. For me, going on a pretty hike is one of the best ways to make sure I spend 5-6 hours in a row off my phone during a weekend day.
Making something with my hands
If I’m sewing or doing a little embroidery, I can’t hold my phone at the same time. Plus, it gives me something to talk about besides what’s on the internet—which is good for both my wellbeing and making my personality less insufferable.
Separate work phone
Best decision I ever made. I don’t have any work-related accounts on my personal phone, and I leave my work phone at my desk. While I do scroll my work accounts too much during the work day (hey, it’s research!) I leave it all behind once I’m off the clock.
Luckily, muscle memory also seems to apply to our brains, because I feel like I bounced back pretty quickly after forming new habits. I feel more like myself again.
If you have any of your own tips, let me know. I need all the help I can get as long as I keep working in this field.
