Brain Rot

Why I'm optimistic

This is the first Google image result for “Italian brain rot.” I don’t know what it means.

Brain rot has entered the zeitgeist. It was the Oxford word of the year in 2024. My students like to watch something called Italian brain rot, which is also connected to something called tralalelo tralala. It's all one big inside joke about how the internet is ruining our brains.

There's this vague impression in the ether that things are hopeless. Young people have rotted their brains with social media and memes, they're cooked, there's nothing we can do.

That's not my position. I have a slightly more optimistic view. It's an argument to get phones out of schools, but also to be aware of the other ways brain rot can creep in.

Brain Rot

First, a definition. Brain rot is a state characterized by a need to be stimulated, rapid task switching, short-span attention, and low-level engagement. It's watching TikTok, or scrolling Instagram. It’s trying to focus on something else but constantly picking up your phone to check your notifications. It’s a family dinner out where the kids stare at their phones the whole time. It’s the gravity you feel toward technology, and away from anything that requires sustained focus and attention.

Here's my thesis: brain rot is context-dependent. Someone can rot their brain in one context, but focus for extended periods on complex tasks in another context. I'm sure this is the case for many of my readers. It's true for me. I have plenty of bad social media habits, and at the end of some days I'm exhausted, flop onto the couch, and scroll or watch random Youtube videos. That's brain rot. But I can code switch, and I also write tens of thousands of words a year on this blog, exercise regularly, do a half-decent job as a teacher, and work on a few different side projects. I can rot my brain in some contexts, but focus for extended periods in others. I'm sure many of my readers have similar stories. Brain rot isn’t an all-or-nothing phenomenon, it’s a set of habits in a specific context. Brain rot becomes all-consuming when those habits pervade more and more of daily life, leaving less time and space to give our full attention to other tasks.

So the solution to brain rot isn't to ban Instagram or eliminate cell phones until kids turn 18. The solution is to create contexts where young people aren't rotting their brains, to show them what they can do when they sustain focus and work hard, to help them develop a different set of habits. The task is made harder by omnipresent social media, sure, but it's not impossible. Students' brains aren't irreparably damaged. Our job is to create spaces where they can meet their potential, and give students models for what the opposite of brain rot looks like.

Some Examples

My school had an extremely lenient cell phone policy this most recent school year. Students could use their phones in the hallways between classes and while going to and from the bathroom. If they were caught using their phone in class the teacher would give that student a warning. If they used their phone again in the same class, the phone would be taken away for the remainder of the period. If a student refused to give up their phone, admin would intervene. But a student could get a warning in every class, every day, without incurring any further consequences.

I bet you can predict what happened. I warned students about their phones every day, often several students per class. But I didn't often take a phone for the period — for the most part, after a student got caught once they would keep their phone away for the rest of the period. I only needed to call for help with a student who refused to give up their phone a handful of times the whole year.

Admin loved this policy. They didn't often get called to intervene, so it was a success.

But students’ brains were rotting every day. They were on their phones moments before class began and immediately after it ended. They were messaging and scrolling social media when they went to the bathroom during class. They became crafty at sneaking glances at their phones when I was helping a student across the room. They felt their phones buzz with a text from a friend in the hallway, and they suddenly “needed” to pee. Brain rot was on their minds, all the time.

Brain rot made learning harder, but not impossible. It was an uphill battle. I came up short lots of days. But when I put the pieces together students could still focus, could still impress me with the quality of the thinking they could do.

We're finally adopting a strict, bell-to-bell, lock-the-phones-away policy when we return in August. Students will not have any access to their phones during the school day. I think it will make a huge difference. Brain rot will be easier to keep at bay. I'll spend less time building habits of focus and perseverance, and more time using those habits to help students learn.

But here's the thing. Phones aren't the only source of brain rot in schools. Chromebooks can be just as bad. And Chromebooks are everywhere these days. In many classrooms, students are rotting their brains playing Slope every time the teacher looks away, or looking at shoes on Amazon every chance they get. Students flip between tabs when the teacher walks by and pretend to work for a moment, then return to their distractions. That's brain rot too.

There's even a style of teaching that teaches brain rot. Some teachers have embraced the AI revolution, because "students will need to use it in jobs someday" or something. Their assignments are a bunch of questions that students drop into ChatGPT, paste back the answers, and move on. It's brain rot disguised as education, requiring no thinking, no sustained attention, no effort.

Optimism

I don't think we're teaching a lost generation. Reflecting on my students this last year, some fell into everyday brain rot. But some resisted. I'm excited we're banning phones. I'm working on new routines and structures to help students with sustained focus. I'm continuing to scale back technology use in my class — not to zero, but well below where I was a few years ago, with lots of guardrails in place. I’m optimistic that students will adapt, develop new habits, and see the value of setting aside their phones for the school day. I hope, at least in my classroom, to avoid letting other forms of brain rot creep in.

Today’s students will enter a world where the power of technology is harnessed to capture and manipulate their attention. Everyone has a hot take on what this means. We should teach students how to use that technology well. We should allow technology because that's what's allowed in the "real world." We should use technology to teach 21st century skills. I’m skeptical. I think the most important 21st century skill, and the hardest to teach, is to show students what sustained focus and attention look like, to show students what their minds are capable of. And I think the best way we can do that is to prioritize brain-rot-free zones in schools, as much as we can. I want to model the habits of thinking that will be most useful for students when they graduate. And at the same time, those habits will make it easier for us to teach students the content we want them to learn in school.

I don’t think the battle against brain rot is hopeless. It does require a lot of structure and routine, and careful thought about what technology is used for in schools. That will be a big goal of mine this coming school year.