Malanginspirasi.com – Life is full of challenges. Every generation struggles with certain challenges in their respective era. Now we are in the era of digitalized world, Artificial Intelligence, and global climate change. The younger generation should be poised to deal with challenges that are brought about by these three forces.
Digitalized world offers niceties and efficiency that the previous generation were not able to enjoy. But while purchasing goods and watching entertainment have become fun and easier, there is a lurking danger that is called brain rot.
Literally, it means the brain cells get weak and severely damaged, turning humans into zombies. Metaphorically, it refers to a symptom that you feel when suddenly you find it harder to think. Your logic is dying, your flow of thoughts suddenly gets jammed, and overall you feel that your thinking capacity is severely reduced.
Experts have been suspecting that this may be caused by the habit of scrolling endlessly through various media in our smartphones.
Imagine this not-so-unusual scene: you sit in a waiting room and begin scrolling through your Instagram or Tik Tok. You get so immersed in this digital world that you are unaware you have been doing that for hours.
You go to classes and do the same thing, looking at your cellphones instead of attending to the lecturers. You sit at a café, waiting for your lunch or dinner, and again you scroll endlessly through your social media in your gadgets. You come home and go to bed and instead of falling asleep you scroll endlessly through the social media, as if that were the only thing that keeps you alive.
The result of this habit is obvious: your brain rots! You can no longer think critically because all you do is receiving barrage of quick and mostly banal information from your digital device. Because of the sheer speed of the waves of information, your brain is denied the opportunity to learn it deeper and digest it critically.
Along with the term “brain rot” comes another term: “digital detoxification” or digital detox, for short. This simply refers to the act of detaching ourselves from intense exposure to the social media in our gadgets.
There are many other activities that feel rewarding and enriching. Chatting face to face with friends, reading hard print books, taking a walk in open air, enjoying music, or doing sports are activities that help us enjoy life without our gadgets.
Brain rot is a real phenomenon, a common mark of modern digital society. But simply being humane is a way to rediscover the true nature of ourselves as human beings.
* Prof. Dr. Patrisius I Djiwandono is an expert in the fields of Research Methodology, Discourse Analysis, Teaching Strategies, and Scientific Writing at Universitas Ma Chung.
