‘Brain rot’ is supposed to be the gradual decline of a person’s mental state, especially from consuming too much trivial or unchallenging garbage on social media, and Australia fears it so much that it banned social media for “children under 16 years.”
It was also the Oxford Word of the Year for 2024, but every generation has feared that there’s technology that will turn future generations into virtual zombies, whether it is controlled by an authoritarian state such as the one in George Orwell’s ‘1984’ (published in 1948) or simply from today’s algorithm feeds on tech like TikTok.
