It was announced in December 2024 that the Oxford English Dictionary’s word of the year was ‘brainrot’.
This is defined as the “supposed deterioration of a person’s mental or intellectual state”, resulting from “overconsumption of material”—referring particularly to online content—that is ” unchallenging”
Casper Grathwohl, President of Oxford Languages, described the process of choosing the word as “deeply moving”, and looked fondly back upon the word of the year for 2023, ‘rizz’.
He aptly noted that the chosen words demonstrated a particular preoccupation with the online world, and noted the self-awareness of Gen Z and Gen Alpha, from whom the term ‘brainrot’ arose. It hints at the knowing irony of ‘brainrot’ being something that arises via social media, the very platform upon which the popularity of the word was spread.
Yet it became quickly apparent that brainrotting might not necessarily be perceived as a harmless joke. The Newport Institute, a mental health center in the US, published online advice about how to recognise and avoid brainrot, treating it with more severity than intended by those who thought it up. It brings about the question: Should we be concerned about our rapidly deteriorating focus?
Where did our attention spans go?
In 2003, American Psychologist Gloria Mark conducted an experiment on attention spans, specifically how long attention was held to a particular task on-screen at work. Using stopwatches, attention spans were timed up until the participant looked away from the screen or switched to a different activity. Attention spans were around 150 seconds. In 2012, this changed to 75 seconds. Across 2016 and 2020, the average was 47 seconds. Perhaps our brains truly are rotting.
The Newport Institute was indeed correct about the harmful nature of our declining focus. Mark followed up her research by measuring how often people switch focus against their heart rate. Indeed, high blood pressure and higher heart rates were discovered in those individuals whose focus switched more often.
Switching focus may feel alleviating, yet in reality, it is exhausting and causes a vicious cycle. Having to re-concentrate on a previous task causes fatigue as we must query ourselves on what we were writing or thinking. This impedes the part of our minds called the executive function. The executive function helps filter peripheral information out. If it works less efficiently, distractions cannot be filtered away and are all the more enticing. A vicious cycle ensues.
How has this happened?
It is easy to blame the cause of this on social media and screen time, but equally some explanation must be sought for our work, which has become increasingly multidisciplinary.
Furthermore, while the pandemic might have benefited those who are in favour of hybrid working and flexible work-from-home options, this manner of working may have harmed our attention spans further. Office setups allow for physical indicators to show someone’s availability to be interrupted—perhaps headphones in, or a closed office door.
At home, a Teams or Slack message can pop up at any time with the pressure to reply immediately. Indeed, home workers may want to demonstrate their diligence by responding as quickly as possible, thereby distracting them from other tasks that then become harder to refocus on.
Similarly, we are increasingly unable to turn off from work, with email notifications coming home with us on our smartphones. This means that the valuable time needed to restore our executive function through rest is interrupted.
Even the lengths of shots in films have gotten shorter in tandem with our lower capacity to focus and have more motion and movement in them than films from the past 75 years. Unfortunately, cutting oneself off from the online world could do as much harm as good: our focus may improve, but our social capital could decline drastically, leading to isolation. We appear in a stalemate with our distractions.
Is there a solution for brainrot?
The potential solution to brainrot comes alongside a great deal of self-reflection, both on a personal and group scale. In terms of the workplace, or changes on a collective level, such notions like France’s ‘Right to Disconnect’ law could alleviate the pressure of constant work distractions. Other workplace changes could see particular windows of time in which emails and messages are exchanged.
Gloria Mark speaks of the different types of attention, and how our peak-focused attention tends to correspond to the ebb and flow of how well our executive function performs at certain times of the day.
Psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi proposed “flow”, which is the optimal state of attention; we are so immersed in something that time is unimportant. This involves using an optimal amount of challenge for our skills. Sufficient challenge and interest create flow.
Low challenge but high interest creates what Gloria Mark calls a “rote activity”, which can often include things like gaming or scrolling through social media—otherwise known as the great and terrible ‘brainrot’.
Entering a state of ‘flow’ certainly sounds appealing, but the very activities that can create this feel all too idealised and are unlikely to be found in a place of work. Perhaps the Oxford English Dictionary’s Word of the Year truly is something all too inescapable.
