It was a little past 4:45 in the afternoon, and I was hurrying to pick up my fifth-grade brother and his friends from soccer practice. As I approached the field, one of his teammates pointed sharply in my direction and asked me a question he seemed to find particularly important.
“Are you skibidi? Do you have skibidi rizz?”
The boys waited for my answer, subtle smirks on their lips.
I stood dumbfounded by this strange combination of words. What does that even mean? Why was this so funny? As I drove my brother and his friends home, the car ride was filled with alien terms like “sigma” and “Turkish Quandale Dingle.”
They explained that ‘Turkish Quandale Dingle’ refers to a nickname given to a teenage boy dancing at the Tiktok Rizz Party, a viral video of teenagers at a sweet sixteen party, and ‘sigma’ is used to characterize something as elite or dominant. That was when I realized the rumors were true: brain rot is real.
If you are unfamiliar with the aforementioned terms, congratulations. You have likely steered clear of this generational epidemic. If not, there is a strong chance that you have been “brain-rotted.”
According to “Know Your Meme,” the term brain-rot originated as an online slang term in 2007, but the concept has returned. In 2023, a YouTube Shorts video labeled “Skibidi Toilet,” which consisted of toilets with heads that formed a singing army, went viral. Immensely appealing to many Generation Alpha children, it launched the common phrase “skibidi toilet.’ This video, arguably, revived the idea of brain rot.
While the precise definition of brain rot is contested, the term generally refers to the linguistic results of the overuse of technology—when a person’s way of thinking and speaking is so overrun with online terms that they become unintelligible to an “offline” person. Examples include the overuse of the phrase “very demure, very mindful” or being unable to prevent oneself from saying “it’s giving ___” before a comparison. Most of these phrases and words come from TikTok, and if, as studies indicate, young children and teenagers spend 2-7 hours on the app daily, it is no wonder that such a vocabulary becomes prominent. But non-Generation Alphas aren’t immune to this phenomenon. Young American adults (ages 18-24) also have an average screen time of approximately 7 hours.
After speaking with my younger brother and his friends, it was clear that these “brain rot” terms were standard in their lexicon. But what do these phrases really mean? According to them, the phrases’ true meaning remains unknown, but that doesn’t stop the kids from deploying them.
Vanessa Williams, a third-grade teacher at St. George Episcopal School in San Antonio, Texas, discussed brain rot and technology’s effect on young children in the classroom. “We are in a digital age where you’re either a digital native or a digital immigrant,” Williams said, explaining how some people have grown accustomed to technology being part of their lives.
Almost every member of Generation Alpha is a digital native. According to Williams, this easy access to technology “110% affects what they’re able to do in the classroom.” What these kids see on their screens is their top source of information and becomes their point of comparison, regardless of its accuracy.
Vanessa Williams’ sister, Kayla Williams, is a middle school teacher with a similar outlook. Kayla Williams, however, disagrees that Generation Alpha’s immersion in technology is wholly negative. “I don’t necessarily believe that it is extremely detrimental to them. I think it’s just a part of their life we must get used to.”
Kayla Williams noted that every generation sees a different form of a similar pattern. “There has always been someone saying, ‘This is ruining the kids.’” She claims that historically, this isn’t true, and we must accept that Generation Alpha’s childhood “simply looks different than ours.”
Although there will always be new innovations in each generation, Kayla Williams acknowledges that children today receive and process information differently because of the increased availability of online media. “Gratification needs to happen immediately. So, it will be difficult for them to understand how to do research or that they need to practice a lot more before they get the hang of something,” Kayla Williams said. This means long-term research, a key element of critical thinking, is challenging for them. Children may now lack the patience and attention span to work for answers and solutions, expecting immediate information reception.
This dependence on instant gratification could explain why many children and teenagers turn to short-form media, such as TikTok and Instagram reels.
In The Oxford Journal, Jui Zaveri writes about the correlation between TikTok and attention span. Zaveri states, “The addictiveness of short-form media isn’t just due to its more easily digestible length. Its brief nature means that more can be produced in a specific span of time. This oversaturation of entertainment possibilities further affects our attention spans. More choice means even less patience.” When we don’t receive the emotional outcome we crave, it’s easy to immediately scroll until our desire is satisfied, leading to a doom-scrolling habit.
With a chronic dependence on social media, younger generations have grown addicted to the positive reinforcement of short-form media. Access to personalized entertainment has never been easier to find. Somehow, it also feels less productive to binge one series for two hours than to scroll through an endless stream of TikToks for the same amount of time.
Edna Garcia, a licensed mental health professional, expanded on social media’s effect on instant gratification and social interaction. Because of the ability to easily scroll, swipe, and press “like,” when we leave the online world, “it can get a little harder to adjust to a slower-paced world.”
Dr. Marc Potenza, a professor of psychiatry at the Child Study Center and Neuroscience at the Yale School of Medicine, elaborated on the impact that social media use has on children’s and adolescents’ cognition. “Some data, for example, from the Adolescent Brain Cognition and Development Study, have suggested a relationship between high-frequency screen media activity and poor cognitive functioning.” This correlation is seen in children as young as nine. However, Potenza explained that the study does not completely explain the nature of this relationship or the specific media platforms that could affect cognitive functioning; thus, more research is necessary.
It is easy to fall into “doom-scrolling” habits when we use technology for the wrong reasons. “It’s that negative reinforcement motivation,” Potenza said, “so using social media to cope with stressors or because individuals feel like they are missing out on aspects of social life. Those may be particularly concerning with respect to psychological distress and overall functioning.”
Additionally, bonding over phrases we hear on social media can feel comforting. Using terms one can only resonate with if they are “chronically online” can give us a strange sense of connection. However, what if making social media trends our whole personality is actually just keeping us out of touch with reality?
Do younger generations acquire a kind of mass personality, instead of unique individualities?
Vanessa Williams shared examples of how separating the lingo we learn online from our daily, real-world experiences can be difficult. She said that some of her students wrote words such as “rizz” (an abbreviation for the term ‘charisma’ used to describe attracting romantic partners) on their school papers. “They’ve been saying it all the time. We’ll also have to teach them the proper word. Instead of just letting them write ‘rizz,’ we should tell them that it means charisma.”
Children, teenagers, and adults are all experiencing a change in common vocabulary that social media artificially manufactured. The inundation of today’s young people with social media has accelerated this process, with the result that members of different generations today can struggle to understand each other. Although we may connect with those of our age group, we are lost in cross-generational translation.
But this doesn’t have to happen. The increasingly popular phrase “disconnect to reconnect” describes the importance of returning to in-person reality. For teenagers with their own devices, managing screen time and phone usage patterns is a great way to keep the brain from falling into the technology-obsessed trap of social media.
Younger children should be encouraged to engage in collaborative, energetic hobbies like sports, art, and dancing to discover themselves and their passions, independent of what they see online. It is impractical to eliminate technology altogether, but a healthy balance can bring us closer to a more connected community.
Everyone, especially young people, should be empowered to use technology to support brain growth, not brain decay — or “rot.”