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I'm a neuroscientist. Here's the surprising truth about TikTok 'brain rot'

‘Brain rot’ was named Oxford's word of the year for 2024, defined as the "supposed deterioration of a person’s mental or intellectual state" resulting from watching too much "trivial or unchallenging" content online, such as TikTok videos. It's a term often bandied about in jokey fashion, but what if there's a grain of truth to it? That's the seemingly scary implication of a new study published by a large team of brain scientists based at Tianjin Normal University in China.

‘Brain rot’ was named Oxford's word of the year for 2024, defined as the "supposed deterioration of a person’s mental or intellectual state" resulting from watching too much "trivial or unchallenging" content online, such as TikTok videos. The team concluded this was bad news for lovers of TikTok as having an oversized OFC could be a sign of what they described as "heightened sensitivity to the rewards and stimuli associated with short video content". Countless brain imaging studies of dubious quality were also published in the same era, many purporting to show the calamitous effects of the World Wide Web on our fragile minds.

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