Brain Rot Emergency: These Internal Documents Prove They’re Controlling You!

You are actively rewiring your brain for the worse by engaging with social media, high volume, quick videos.

And the social media executives don't let their kids use this stuff because they designed it to be addictive, and they know that millions and millions of kids have been cyberbullied, sextorted, many have committed suicide, so I'm getting angry.

And then from the medical perspective, it's rewiring your body, increasing your risk of heart disease and PTSD.

We've moved too far into the virtual world, and the results are catastrophic.

People are spending roughly about six and a half hours a day on their phones. What do we do about this?

Well, here's the amazing thing: We actually can control our fate. So- We are joined by a social psychologist and a Harvard physician-

- to dive into the technology addiction and brain rot crisis billions are facing worldwide. And how we can counter its devastating mental health effects.

You have to reclaim your attention, because without the ability to pay attention for several minutes at a time, we're seeing the destruction of human potential, the human relationships, the connection.

But there's all these small tweaks that you can do to override that primal urge to scroll. For example, ninety-one percent of people had an improvement in attention, well-being, and mental health after just two weeks of continuing to use their device, but not having internet access. Next, keep your phone out of your arm's reach, because the sheer potential for distraction has actually been shown to change your prefrontal cortex, which is called brain drain.

So yes, we should exert more self-control, but we're being pushed to addictive apps, and it's messing us all up. That's not our fault.

Would you advise people to delete these short-form videos?

Oh, my God, yes! That would be the most important thing you can do for your intelligence and for humanity. But if I was going to offer some specific advice, here are the three things that I do with my students to reclaim their attention.

And then to add to that, I have the three-second brain reset. So first...

I wanted to ask you guys what you thought of this.

Hey, you're back!

This terrifies me.

We've got to stop this now.

[gentle music] Guys, I've got a quick favor to ask you. We're approaching a significant subscriber milestone on this show, and roughly sixty-nine percent of you that listen and love this show haven't yet subscribed for whatever reason. If there was ever a time for you to do us a favor, if we've ever done anything for you, given you value in any way, it is simply hitting that Subscribe button. And it means so much to myself, but also to my team, 'cause when we hit these milestones, we go away as a team and celebrate. And it's the thing, the simple, free, easy thing you can do to help make this show a little bit better every single week. So that's a favor I would ask you, and, um, if you do hit the Subscribe button, I won't let you down, and we'll continue to find small ways to make this whole production better. Thank you so much for being part of this journey. It means the world, and, uh, yeah, let's do this. [upbeat music] Jonathan, Aditi. Jonathan, I've heard you say that the destruction of attention is the largest threat to humanity that's happening around the world. And I've also heard you say that short-form videos are the worst of the worst because they're shattering attention spans. The reason why I wanted to have this conversation today is somewhat personal, and in fact, all of the conversations I have in the Diary are somewhat personal to some degree. Um, they're inspired by some unanswered question I have in my head and also some observation I have in my life, and the observation I've had is that short-form videos, in particular, are making my life worse. And actually, I've got to say, the catalyst moment, really, where I thought, "Do you know what? I need to get you exceptional people together to have this conversation," was I thought this, I then looked at my screen time and saw a huge change. I felt so much worse because all these social platforms have short-form video now, and then I actually heard Elon Musk, who, you know, has a, a social media platform that does short-form video, say that he thinks it's one of the worst inventions for humanity.