Pew Research Center survey<\/a> conducted in 2025 found that 63 percent of U.S. adults ages 18 to 29 say they are online \u201calmost constantly.\u201d<\/p>\nOf course, kids and adults alike can do creative or practical things on our devices. We can connect with faraway family and friends, make art or play educational games. These things can help develop a healthy brain.<\/p>\n
But it\u2019s often far too easy to get distracted and sucked into brain rot.<\/p>\n
Addicted to screens<\/h2>\n Having a phone or tablet nearby offers up endless temptations. And you don\u2019t even have to be on your device to get distracted. One study found that just having your phone in the same room as you\u2009\u2014\u2009available but not in use\u2009\u2014\u2009can make it more difficult to think and process information.<\/p>\n
Jason Nagata, a doctor who specializes in teen health and digital media at the University of California, San Francisco, led a study tracking which apps young people opened and used while in school. Spoiler alert: Educational tools were near the bottom of the list. Instead, Nagata says, \u201cthe top apps were social media, YouTube videos and video gaming.\u201d<\/p>\n
These types of findings don\u2019t surprise Lembke. Now in her early 20s, Lembke used social media for five to six hours per day as a preteen. Back then, she says, \u201cI felt much worse about myself\u2009\u2026\u2009I felt depressed. I felt more anxious.\u201d<\/p>\n
However, Lembke felt trapped in the online world. \u201cMy social life was there, so I couldn\u2019t leave,\u201d she says. Now, she understands that her compulsive scrolling and checking wasn\u2019t really her fault. Social media apps and other similar technologies \u201care built to pull you in,\u201d Lembke says. \u201cThey are built to maximize attention at all costs.\u201d<\/p>\n
This design can lead to symptoms similar to those seen with addiction to drugs or alcohol, Nagata says. In a 2021 study of almost 500 16- to 19-year-old students in India, more than one in three showed signs of addiction to their phones, including constantly checking for updates on social media or feeling pain in their wrists while using their phones. Addictive or at least habit-forming smartphone use also interferes with sleep, studying and friendships.<\/p>\n
Extremely Online: Internet Use Among U.S. Adults<\/h3>\n In a national survey conducted in 2025, 41 percent reported being online almost constantly. The number is even higher for young adults: 63 percent for those ages 18 to 29.<\/p>\nPew Research Center<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\nIn March, a California jury found that Meta, the company behind Instagram, and Google, the company behind YouTube, had harmed a young user\u2019s mental health. That user, now 20, had been on social media compulsively since she was a child. She said this had triggered anxiety and depression, and the jury agreed, awarding $6 million in damages. When Lembke heard the news, she felt like she\u2019d just won the Super Bowl. \u201cI was tearing up,\u201d she says. \u201cIt felt like finally there was a legal path for accountability that was being charted.\u201d<\/p>\n
Adults are at risk of problem-causing social media or phone use too. But the younger you are, the harder it tends to be to control your screen use, Klingberg says. That\u2019s because choosing to put down or ignore a tempting device requires using the prefrontal cortex, a brain area that, among other things, is involved with \u201cself-management and impulse control,\u201d Perry says. But the prefrontal cortex is one of the last brain regions to fully mature.<\/p>\n
The teen brain also responds strongly to rewards. Reward pathways in the brain activate when we do things such as eat chocolate or win money. Research has shown that getting likes on social media triggers these same pathways. This sensitivity normally decreases with age. But when young people checked social media constantly, one study found, their brains remained highly sensitive to rewards.<\/p>\n
Despite all these obstacles, Lembke managed to take control and make a change. In ninth grade, she deleted the Instagram app from her phone. \u201cI felt really freed,\u201d she says. In her senior year of high school, she founded the Log Off Movement, which empowers young people to think critically and make mindful decisions about how they engage with online content.<\/p>\n
However, Lembke thinks her early compulsive social media use left \u201cdeep scars.\u201d She has struggled with an eating disorder that she thinks is largely due to images and interactions she saw and experienced on Instagram as a young girl. She says the app\u2019s content changed \u201cthe relationship I had with myself and my body.\u201d<\/p>\n
Cause and effect<\/h2>\n Concerns about young people\u2019s use of social media and other digital technologies have led researchers to dig deeper.<\/p>\n
One important research project is known as the ABCD, short for Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development, study. It has been collecting data from more than 11,500 U.S. teens since 2016. At the beginning, participants were ages 9 or 10. Each year since then, researchers have assessed these young people\u2019s health and screen use. And every other year, the participants have gone through medical tests, including brain scans.<\/p>\n
In 2025, Nagata and colleagues reviewed what scientists learned from the ABCD data. They linked higher amounts of screen time to a higher risk of health issues such as depression, attention-deficit\/hyperactivity disorder and eating disorders.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s one thing to link health problems and screen time, but it\u2019s far tougher to show one causes the other. Following the same young people over the course of several years helps. Researchers can study whether more screen time actually leads to health problems at some later date.<\/p>\n
Nagata\u2019s team used a subset of the ABCD data to see what happened to kids and teens with disordered patterns of phone and social media use. One year later, these young people were more likely than their peers to experience depression, attention issues, sleep problems and several other health issues, the team reported in February in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\u201cIf you feel bad about the content that you\u2019ve been seeing, then that is maybe a signal [to stop].\u201d<\/p>\n
Jason Nagata<\/strong>Klingberg, the neuroscientist at the Karolinska Institutet, was part of a team that analyzed four years\u2019 worth of ABCD data. Rising social media use led to a greater likelihood of inattention symptoms over that time period, the team found. But the opposite was not true. Inattention symptoms did not lead to more social media use, the researchers reported in January in Pediatrics Open Science<\/em>.<\/p>\nKlingberg\u2019s group also looked at brain scans collected during the ABCD study. High social media use\u2009\u2014\u2009around two hours or more per day\u2009\u2014\u2009slightly stunted development of the cerebellum, the scans showed. Though the effect was very small, Klingberg says, \u201cthe trend was towards increasing changes.\u201d If that trend continues over the next few years, he says, the effect would matter. The cerebellum has many roles. It\u2019s important for body control, language and emotions and has been linked to attention, Klingberg says. So the cerebellum changes that his team found could help explain attention issues experienced by teens who increase their social media use.<\/p>\n
Importantly, social media use was the only screen activity showing a negative impact on brain development in this study. Video games can actually help make kids smarter, Klingberg\u2019s previous research has shown. But games might still pose some risks, he cautions, like \u201cif you get so hooked that you can\u2019t control the amount of gaming.\u201d<\/p>\n
Now, using AI to do work for you could be a new form of brain rot. Last year, researchers put this theory to the test in people ages 18 to 39. The team measured brain activity as groups of study participants wrote essays during several sessions over a four-month period. One group couldn\u2019t use any online tools for help. Another group had access to Google search. The last group used ChatGPT.<\/p>\n
Those using ChatGPT lagged behind the others in their level of brain activity and their ability to remember the essays they\u2019d written, the researchers reported last June in a study posted at arXiv.org. That study has not gone through peer review. But one that has from October 2025 supports the arXiv paper\u2019s findings. Researchers compared how much people learn when using either Google search or an AI chatbot to research a topic. They found that those who used Google could explain their topic more deeply and thoroughly.<\/p>\n
Tzipi Horowitz-Kraus is a neuroscientist at Technion\u2013Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa who was not involved in either study but has done independent research in this area. When kids get an easy answer from AI, she says, they\u2019re \u201cnot developing the basic skills that [they] need in order to perform as an adult in this world.\u201d<\/p>\n
Adapt and fight back<\/h2>\n If everyone growing up now is gobbling brain rot, any problems it causes with thinking, attention or mental health could become an epidemic, Klingberg says. \u201cIf we have constant distractions in the entire population year after year, we will have long-term effects,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
That sounds scary. But don\u2019t expect a brain-rotted zombie apocalypse any time soon.<\/p>\n
\u201cChildren adapt to new media quickly,\u201d Baumgartner says. Teens who use digital devices a lot while also doing other things will say they can\u2019t focus, her research finds. However, when they are not trying to multitask, they can still focus as well as their peers who report less multitasking. This suggests to her that screens impact kids\u2019 motivation to pay attention, not their ability. So, she concludes, brain rot \u201cdoes not completely ruin your brain.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\u201cWhat you do with your brain affects your brain.\u201d<\/p>\n
Klingberg<\/strong><\/cite><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/figure>\nStill, Baumgartner says, brain rot can be a big problem if it replaces healthier things kids and adults could be doing with their time. When you\u2019re gazing into the glowing rectangle of your phone, you\u2019re not working, studying, playing sports, sleeping or spending quality time face to face with friends and family. So it\u2019s often not the brain rot itself that\u2019s harmful, but the loss of other activities you could have been doing.<\/p>\n
Nagata agrees. \u201cIf you\u2019re using media in a way that\u2019s making you feel better about yourself so that you\u2019re learning, you\u2019re connecting with people, that\u2019s great,\u201d he says. \u201cIf you feel bad about the content that you\u2019ve been seeing, then that is maybe a signal [to stop].\u201d<\/p>\n
In the end, though, it\u2019s not fair to put the responsibility for managing screen time entirely on us\u2009\u2014\u2009and especially not on kids, since their brains haven\u2019t fully developed. Perry and Lembke argue that tech companies shouldn\u2019t be allowed to market products that harm kids\u2019 health. The lawsuits currently moving through U.S. courts will help decide this issue.<\/p>\n
Lembke hopes that in the future, people will look back on today\u2019s social media the way we now look back on smoking in public places. Just a couple decades ago, \u201csmoking was the status quo,\u201d she says. \u201cThink about how much we have changed.\u201d She also hopes that the devices and apps we use to connect with each other will no longer spread brain rot. Rather, Lembke says, these tools should \u201cgive more power to the individual to shape their experiences.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Emma Lembke joined Instagram at age 12. Soon, she found herself \u201cscrolling mindlessly for hours, addicted to gaining a certain number of likes, a certain number of comments.\u201d She often wanted to stop\u2009\u2014\u2009but couldn\u2019t. She\u2019s not alone. Most of us these days know the feeling of mindlessly scrolling through low-quality content. We call this sensation […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":105190,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[10],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.adviews.info\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105189"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.adviews.info\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.adviews.info\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.adviews.info\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.adviews.info\/news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=105189"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.adviews.info\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105189\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.adviews.info\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/105190"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.adviews.info\/news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=105189"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.adviews.info\/news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=105189"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.adviews.info\/news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=105189"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}