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“Lazy-girl high protein lunch.” “Get Rid Of Your Arm Flab.” “The Dark Side of Each Zodiac Sign.” “Weirdly Specific H. Pylori Patterns NOBODY talks about.”
This is the hell that is my discovery page on Instagram. I don’t know what that last thing even is! And yet, I will watch them all, thus teaching The Algorithm I want to see this stuff even though I don’t, not really.
When I scroll through my feed, I am delivered a steady stream of stuff like above, as well as Elder Millennial/Eldest Daughter comedy, endometriosis awareness and, occasionally, a post by someone I know. My friends send me various bits of content they know I’ll laugh at, and I do — proof positive they know you better than any algorithm. I’m constantly being fed bits of short-form content, and I am never full.
(Michael Dwyer / The Associated Press files)
I’ve written in this space a lot about burnout, looking at it mostly through the lens of work. But constantly ingesting content can also contribute to burn out, too. The endless hot takes, ideas, opinions, tips (“Here Are 10 Things I Stopped Doing To Have My Best Body In My 40s!”) and lives on display — it’s a lot, and it’s a lot for your brain to process.
A new study from a team of researchers at Karabük University in Turkey looking at “the cognitive cost of brain rot” found that passive consumption of short-form content triggers a “loss spiral”: “first depleting resources (burnout), which then elevated stress and anxiety, ultimately precipitating depressive symptoms.”
It also affects how your brain processes information, keeping you in a state of hypervigilance and not allowing your brain to fully absorb what’s being thrown at it before quickly moving onto the next thing.
And it’s not just IG, but YouTube video essays and podcasts and news and podcasts about the news. We are consuming way more media than we ever have before.
Putting it in the context of burnout, however, was a light bulb for me. It’s a cognitive load that I am willfully taking on, and I don’t have the capacity. And I don’t really want to make the capacity, either.
For a week during fringe — which I recognize is an already-overstimulating week for me — I deleted Instagram from my phone. And wow, lo: my screentime plummeted and I felt better. I didn’t have a cacophony of content creators shouting directly into my brain, jockeying for scraps of my ever-fragmented attention. I wasn’t all-or-none about it; I was allowed to check IG on a desktop, just not on my phone, and it turns out that was enough friction for me to not scroll for hours.
I’ve since re-downloaded the app — I wanted to share some work stuff — and that familiar itchy hypervigilance returned.
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My negotiation with screen time is ongoing. I have self-implemented rules to stave off the effects of brain rot — no phone in bed, don’t begin the day on your phone, you can’t be on a little screen if you’re watching the big screen, etc. — that work until I break them, and break them I do. But the siren song is becoming less strong. I like, it turns out, being able to read a book. Or peaceably waiting for a fringe show to start, looking up and around while everyone else is looking down.
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