“You’ll rot your brain!”
Ah, the refrain of moms and dads everywhere since television was invented. Even before we had the science and knowledge to realize there are consequences to staring at a screen all day, the zombie-eyed stares of children gawping at a box instinctively made adults uncomfortable.
Technology has come a long way since the mid-twentieth century, but so has scientific research – and now there’s some research to back up your mom’s claims that you’re “rotting your brain.”
A growing body of evidence supports the claim that consuming mind-numbing content – like we do while scrolling social media – literally reduces the physical gray matter in our brains.
We also know that it results in shortened attention spans and poor memory.
And guess what?
Social media and game designers are doing this on purpose to feed our compulsive desire to endlessly consume content, says lead author Michael Moshel.
“This can significantly impair attention and executive functions by overwhelming our focus and altering the way we perceive and respond to the world.”
He also says that “doomscrolling” is a consequence of “our brain’s natural tendency to seek out new things, especially when it comes to potentially harmful or alarming information, a trait that once helped us survive.”
There is other research that suggests mindless scrolling indices a dissociative state, which causes us to lose track of time while doing it. A 2023 study of around a thousand people found that compulsively consuming digital content can lead to poor physical and mental health outcomes and high levels of stress.
The US Surgeon General warns against allowing anyone younger than 13 to use social media at all. These apps bombard users with rapidly changing stimuli and are forcing us to constantly change focus. Over time, this degrades our ability to concentrate on one task for long periods of time.
But it’s the physical effects on the brain that researchers are finding much more alarm. Excessive internet use has now been linked to decreased gray matter volume in the areas of the brain associated with decision-making, reward processing, and impulse control.
“These changes reflect patterns observed in substance addictions.”
Let’s be honest; you’ve known for a long time that you need to spend less time on your phone.
This new year might be the time to make those changes happen.