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View all search resultsFighting brain rot must begin now
Like it or not, brain rot is a real and growing issue in the digital age, and poses an urgent need for government to tackle it, lest Golden Indonesia 2045 remains just that: a vision.
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Digital childhood: A woman holds up a smartphone at a bus shelter in Jakarta for her daughter to attend a virtual kindergarten class on Aug. 31, 2021, during the COVID-19 pandemic. (AFP/Adek Berry)
I
took the chance of writing and submitting this note to The Jakarta Post, not as an expert in literacy or education but as a concerned reader troubled by the normalization of what can only be described as brain rot.
Oxford University Press crowned the term as its 2024 Word of the Year. The Post offered a succinct description of brain fog as a mental fog after doomscrolling, and how it had become a real issue of intellectual deterioration.
An article about it that I shared on X garnered over 76,000 views, suggesting the issue resonates widely. Ironically, I suspect that some who engaged with my post might not have finished reading the article.
Jessica Roy’s article titled "If You Know What 'Brain Rot' Means, You Might Already Have It", published in in The New York Times, highlights the issue.
Frankly, I feel partly afflicted: struggling to focus, finding it harder to read long texts.
Johann Hari explains this decline in The Stolen Focus: Why You Can’t Pay Attention, noting factors like technology-driven attention spans, multitasking myths, lifestyle shifts and systemic priorities favoring speed over depth.
Scientific studies have also linked digital addiction with cognitive decline. Studies by Moshel et al. (2024), Firth et al. (2019) and Gloria Mark reveal an alarming trend. The average time spent focusing on a screen has shrunk from 2.5 minutes in 2004 to just 47 seconds in 2018, as detailed in Mark's book Attention Span.
However, a Scientific American article by technology editor Ben Guarino in December 2024 offers a historical perspective. It argues that excessive distractions are not new, as David Thoreau noted them in 1854. Distractions have always existed, evolving from print media to television and now, the internet.
Social media’s infinite scroll design, akin to a bottomless soup bowl, traps users in a cycle of shallow content. Finding quality content that counters brain rot is a daunting task. When asked, “What social media content changed your life?” the common answer is likely “None.”
In contrast, books and films often leave a lasting impact. Hari reminds us that “the medium is the message”, shaping how we process and respond to information. Social media platform X fosters quick emotional reactions while TikTok thrives on trends, often at the expense of substance.
Excessive internet use contributes to brain rot for two key reasons: shallow content and information overload. Together, they rob us of the time and capacity for deep thinking. Worse, habitual consumption of bite-sized content makes it harder to engage with longer, more meaningful texts. This is not about labeling the internet as good vs. bad; rather, it is about recognizing its effects as healthy vs. unhealthy.
When meeting someone new, I often ask, “Who is your favorite person?” If I don’t know them, I follow up with, “What book did they write?” These conversations have led me to books like The Tyranny of Merit by Harvard political philosophy professor Michael Sandel and Saving Us: A Climate Scientist's Case for Hope and Healing in a Divided World by climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe. Sharing insights from these books online has sparked meaningful discussions and engaged thousands of readers.
For me, reading is an intentional practice; one I consistently share to encourage others to pick up a book and build a reading habit. I am a firm believer that literacy and critical reading are foundational skills that everyone ought to possess. True literacy is more than just the ability to read and write; it also involves processing information, understanding context and making inferences.
The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), which oversees the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), also measures adult literacy through the Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC). Also called the Survey of Adult Skills, the PIAAC shows alarming literacy rates among adults.
The results of the 2015 survey for Jakarta revealed that nearly 70 percent of adults struggled with literacy, among which 32.1 percent were at the lowest level: only able to skim texts for a single detail. This demands little more than basic vocabulary, with no need to grasp the flow or structure of sentences and paragraphs. If these results were troubling a decade ago, how much worse is it today amid the influx of low-quality content?
The rise of artificial intelligence further complicates this issue. While AI enhances efficiency, overreliance on it may weaken human cognitive abilities. Without considering its risks, intellectual curiosity might drop and learning could suffer.
Several countries are actively addressing this crisis. Australia limits social media use for children under 16, while the European Literacy Policy Network (ELINET) champions reading as a fundamental right and urges all stakeholders to contribute to literacy promotion.
Reading is an antidote to brain rot. Long-form texts, whether newspapers, essays or books, demand focus and analytical thinking. However, what seems simple has become a complex challenge. Systemic barriers persist: unequal access, economic disparities, underfunded libraries, exam-driven education and minimal government support for books.
Culturally, reading still lacks strong role models. Influencers tend to prioritize a consumerist lifestyle, or at least nudge their audience to buy something. Even when libraries or reading spaces are showcased, it’s often for their aesthetics rather than their function.
Also, can you name a public official known as an avid reader? More than 10, if any?
I don’t claim to have solutions, only reflections. Just as I once wrote about climate anxiety and its impact on the Golden Indonesia 2045 vision, this issue demands urgent attention, too. The so-called golden generation we envision will remain a dream unless we tackle brain rot head-on.
Congratulations on making it to the end of this long text (less than 1,000 words!). Let’s cultivate a culture of reading and literacy. Our intellectual future depends on it.
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The writer is a sustainable energy analyst, a self-professed slow reader and an aspiring columnist.
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