Social Media
Episodes
Dr. Rhonda Patrick and Dr. Arthur Brooks explore the science of happiness and how to live a more meaningful life.
In this Aliquot, Dr. Andrew Huberman and I explore the complexities of digital engagement, share strategies for managing...
In this clip, Dr. Andrew Huberman discusses social media's dopamine effects, usage limits, and its impact on relationships and ADHD.
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Dr. Rhonda Patrick and Dr. Arthur Brooks explore the science of happiness and how to live a more meaningful life.
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In this Aliquot, Dr. Andrew Huberman and I explore the complexities of digital engagement, share strategies for managing...
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In this clip, Dr. Andrew Huberman discusses social media's dopamine effects, usage limits, and its impact on relationships and ADHD.
Topic Pages
News & Publications
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Arguments about "brain rot" from TikTok and similar apps often involve anecdotes rather than data. To address this, a new meta-analysis examined whether short-form video use is linked with changes in cognition and mental health.
The researchers combined 71 studies with 98,299 adolescents and adults whose engagement with TikTok or general short-form video use was assessed. The studies assessed how much people engaged with short-form videos and examined how this related to measures of cognition and mental health.
Here are the key results:
- Across all studies, heavier use was moderately associated with poorer cognition overall, with the clearest links for attention and for inhibitory control, the mental ability to suppress impulses and stay on tasks, and weaker links for memory, language, and working memory, while reasoning showed no reliable association.
- On mental health scales, heavier use tracked with small but consistent signs of worse well-being (especially more anxiety and stress), and with weaker links to depression, loneliness, negative mood, and poorer sleep, while self-esteem and body image scores showed no clear pattern.
- Measures that framed use as a behavioral addiction showed stronger associations with both cognitive and mental health problems than metrics that only counted minutes or distinguished users from non-users.
- Correlations were similar in youth and adult samples, and results changed little when studies adjusted for background factors such as age, gender, or other social media use.
Fast, highly stimulating clips may teach the brain to expect constant novelty, which can make slower, effortful tasks and ordinary rewards feel flat. Altered reward circuits, repeated exposure to mental health-themed content, and late-night viewing that disrupts sleep are plausible pathways linking heavier use with difficulties in attention and mood, while the overwhelmingly cross-sectional evidence cannot establish cause and effect.
Taken together, the review suggests that short-form videos appear most concerning when use reflects addictive patterns that interfere with sleep, offline relationships, or tasks requiring sustained attention. Studies that follow users over time and that distinguish types of content and user motivations are needed, so that public debates about "brain rot" can shift from slogans to concrete guidance. In this clip, I discuss concerns about early smartphone and tablet access among kids and its effects on mental health later in life.
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Great comment from HackerNews user yannibuk:
What’s interesting is that a big driver for this is social media. I was at a conference once & the CEO of Perdue listed this as a top driver behind this movement. He justified it this way: imagine that it costs an extra $0.01 per pound to create chicken meat that is antibiotic free. If the profit margin was $0.05 per pound that would cut profits by 20%. Today, negative PR on Facebook or Twitter can quickly spread to erode the value of a brand far more than $0.01 per pound of cost savings. He said that the reason for the switch is driven by consumers, who are now empowered by social media. From a nutrition tech standpoint there are a number of products including probiotics, beta glucans & others that help to protect the birds by boosting immune system activity rather than by killing bacteria. When used in combination with vaccines they can be very effective, albeit slightly more expensive. However, these ingredients add cost & come at a metabolic cost to the animal (i.e. it takes more food to produce 1 pound of meat if more of that energy is directed towards a functioning immune system & away from weight gain).
Animal nutrition science is in many ways more advanced than human nutrition due to the ability to conduct controlled studies and access to large amounts of data. However, the goals are very different.
Animals account for ~80% of antibiotic usage in the U.S. and MRSA now kills more people in the U.S. than HIV. It’s an interesting topic.
Makes you sort of think twice about “ag gag” laws coming into play in some states.