Young people are always online. And it’s not a bad thing. Here’s why
Being chronically online doesn’t mean you have brain rot. Stay logged in, move with the times and leave haters behind
In the weeks leading up to the end of 2024, dictionary companies in the US and UK scurried to crown their Word of The Year. They considered delulu, brat, manifest, demure, enshittification, and romantasy. One term that was on every list: Brain rot. The term indicated that young people were so online, so much of the time, consuming so much mediocre content that their brains had literally started to decompose.
OMG, dictionary folks. Stop hating on young people, and stop with the self-righteous fears. Being online 24/7 isn’t a bug, it’s a feature of modern life. Sure, we’re layers deep into the internet, but that’s exactly where new ideas are being born, where people are doing exciting things, where we go to see the world and to escape from it.
Young people may not be able to decipher physical maps, read an analogue clock, know how to use a telephone or write in cursive. But why grudge them a life that’s made easier by tech? Besides, tech disruptions aren’t new. When TVs were introduced in the 1960s, naysayers predicted the downfall of society. By the ’90s they were calling the TV an idiot box, their own version of brain rot. When people started using Google, librarians lost it. There were concerns that keying in queries meant we couldn’t do research. What we’ve realised, over and over, is that using technology doesn’t rot our brains. But holding back as the world changes (and flexing that you know your friend’s phone number by heart) is a pretty pointless use of grey cells.
The Gen Z stereotype is so off-mark, it’s laughable. No one actually says “skibidi” or “rizz” unless they’re dropping it ironically. Being young is about more than saying “vibe” and “IYKYK” in conversation. And look what we found when we were doomscrolling: The term brain rot itself dates back to 1854. American poet and philosopher Henry David Thoreau used the term in his book Walden to condemn the decline in critical thinking.
Young people didn’t cause climate change, they didn’t create today’s geopolitical mess, they’re not why the rupee is sliding against the dollar. The library-going, phone-number-remembering, analogue-clock-reading generation did that. Young people, meanwhile are fighting for work-life balance, amplifying the #MeToo movement and setting up thrift stores and resale networks. The brain-rot generation is the one that has normalised being a child of divorce, recognised LGBTQIA+ rights and will clap back at trolls.
The only people who romanticise going off-grid today are the wealthy (who made much of their money from the rise of the internet). And even they’ve merely outsourced their online tasks – their assistants write their emails and set up alerts. Gen Z would gladly unplug and live in the mountains too – but we’ve inherited a wrecked job market from the TV generation and need social media to stay visible and caught up.
And people are doing just fine, staring at their phones. They don’t need advice from a generation that looked up, smiled in photos and left the world in a mess.
No cap.
From HT Brunch, March 15, 2025
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