The consequences of making habit-forming apps.
I have two YouTube videos in my Watch Later that I have ironically been procrastinating on watching: replacing doomscrolling with writing (how to finally write your novel) and Self Education: Your Best Defense Against Brain Rot. Both videos take an almost combative stance against the use of social media, largely because spending time on the platform du jour often devolves into doomscrolling for hours until your brain rots.
We all surely know what “doomscrolling” is by now: it is the tendency to lose hours on social media, often encountering a potent cocktail of bad news, drama, outrage and internet ire. Brain rot, which was the Oxford Word of the Year for 2024, seems to be the natural result of doomscrolling. Oxford defined “brain rot” as
“the supposed deterioration of a person’s mental or intellectual state, especially viewed as the result of overconsumption of material (now particularly online content) considered to be trivial or unchallenging. Also: something characterized as likely to lead to such deterioration.”
Our brains are rotting. Our social lives are crumbling. Our attention spans are shrinking.
The way that we design habit-forming apps is to blame.