The article explains how heavy consumption of short-form, sensational online content can cause a decline in attention, reasoning and emotional resilience — a pattern often called 'brain rot'. An arXiv preprint by Xing et al. found that exposure to popular short posts degraded four LLMs in areas such as reasoning, long-context understanding and safety, with a dose–response effect. Human studies and reviews link doomscrolling to shorter attention spans, depression and lower self-esteem. The piece urges policy and design changes, plus mindful media habits, to protect both people and AI.
Even AI Can Suffer 'Brain Rot': The Cognitive Cost of Short-Form Junk Content
The article explains how heavy consumption of short-form, sensational online content can cause a decline in attention, reasoning and emotional resilience — a pattern often called 'brain rot'. An arXiv preprint by Xing et al. found that exposure to popular short posts degraded four LLMs in areas such as reasoning, long-context understanding and safety, with a dose–response effect. Human studies and reviews link doomscrolling to shorter attention spans, depression and lower self-esteem. The piece urges policy and design changes, plus mindful media habits, to protect both people and AI.
04:13, 06.11.2025Technology
Even AI Can Suffer 'Brain Rot'
Scrolling endlessly through short-form videos on platforms such as TikTok, Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts is often treated as a harmless way to relax. Yet mounting evidence suggests heavy consumption of bite-sized, sensational content can erode attention, critical thinking and emotional resilience — a phenomenon popularly described as 'brain rot.'
Oxford Dictionary: a perceived loss of intelligence or critical-thinking ability resulting from the overconsumption of unchallenging or frivolous online material.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates that about half of teenagers spend four hours or more per day on screens, making potential cognitive harms an important public-health concern.
AI Shows Similar Vulnerabilities
A recent preprint on arXiv by Xing et al. tested four large language models (LLMs) using short, highly popular posts — the same bite-sized items that keep human users glued to feeds. The authors reported measurable declines in reasoning, long-context comprehension and safety behavior, along with increases in the models' tendency to inflate so-called 'dark traits' such as psychopathy and narcissism. The paper also described a dose–response relationship: greater exposure to this kind of low-quality content produced more severe degradation.
These findings suggest the problem is not simply about individual susceptibility: the content itself and repeated exposure can degrade both human and machine performance.
Human Costs: Attention, Mood and Self-Worth
A review in Brain Sciences linked doomscrolling and heavy short-form consumption to emotional desensitisation, reduced attention spans, depression and lower self-esteem. Separately, research from MIT has reported that students who relied on AI tools like ChatGPT to write essays showed reduced neural markers of cognitive engagement during learning tasks — evidence that offloading thinking to convenient summaries can blunt mental effort.
At the same time, AI tools are becoming ubiquitous. Reports state that ChatGPT reached hundreds of millions of users weekly and that AI summary features on major search platforms reach billions of users monthly, amplifying the potential for low-effort content to spread widely.
Why This Happens
Two features of modern feeds intensify the problem: passive consumption and algorithmic feedback loops. Most users do not meticulously choose every item they view; they choose when to tap or swipe next. Recommendation systems then amplify any slight increase in engagement, creating an addictive, effectively endless stream of similar content.
What Can Be Done
Researchers and policymakers should consider a mix of product-design and behavioural interventions to reduce risk. Possible measures include:
- Designing recommendation algorithms to prioritise longer-form, higher-quality and more challenging material;
- Providing stronger user controls and friction (for example, prompts or time limits) to curb passive consumption;
- Encouraging offline activities and deliberate cognitive practice to rebuild attention and critical reasoning;
- Establishing evidence-based standards for platform design and mental-health safeguards.
Mitigating 'brain rot' will require a combination of individual media habits, education and industry-level design changes that value mental well-being over short-term engagement.
Originally published by Verdict, a GlobalData-owned brand. This article is for general informational purposes and does not constitute professional advice. Readers should seek specialist guidance before acting on the information provided.