Pakistan’s 'brain rot'

We are increasingly living in a post-truth world. But what does it mean? Well, Oxford Dictionaries define it “as relating to and denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotions and personal belief”.

There is a reason why I am reminded of this term – or word. Post-truth was chosen as the word of the year in 2016, after the word’s proliferation in the first election of Donald Trump as the president of the United States. He was characterised as engaging in a ‘war on truth’.

There is no obvious connection between that 2016 word of Oxford Dictionaries and the word chosen this year, when Trump has been re-elected. In any case, the Oxford Dictionaries word for 2024 is ‘brain rot’. There were other words to choose from, such as ‘lore’, ‘demure’, ‘romantasy’, ‘dynamic pricing’, and ‘slop’.

‘Brain rot’ is a slang term for supposed mental damage done by overconsumption of trivial online content. It relates to how social media is being used in most countries of the world. We, in Pakistan, have our own problems in this context. And there have been reports this week to underline this issue.

Social media, of course, is an integral part of the lives of most people around the world, including in Pakistan. It serves many purposes. What has become a major concern is that it also dispenses disinformation, misinformation and fake news. The advent of Artificial Intelligence has changed the very nature of the game. It is hard to distinguish between what is real and what is not.

I confess to not having much understanding of these matters and have no presence on any social media platform beyond WhatsApp. For this reason, I do not fully comprehend the measures enforced by authorities to curtail freedom in the digital domain and to regulate social media. The thoughts that I have at this time relate to reports I have read this week – including on the net – about the impact of social media on mental health.

I am not aware of any professionally conducted study of the impact of social media in Pakistan. What we know is that in the political arena, the PTI has excelled in using social media as a weapon. The party has ‘keyboard warriors’ that have attracted the wrath of the ruling authorities.

On Thursday, a statement of ISPR, issued after the 84th Formation Commanders’ Conference at the GHQ, decried a social media campaign to spread allegations of protesters’ killings during the PTI demonstration in Islamabad last week. The statement labelled it as a “pre-planned, coordinated, and premeditated” propaganda effort aimed at sowing discord between the military and the public”.

There was a reference to how PTI activists residing abroad use social media in a column Ansar Abbasi wrote this week in this paper. The leading investigative reporter said that the PTI leadership has become a hostage to this group. He said that the campaign of overseas supporters and social media activists of the PTI against the military and the army chief is creating challenges for the party. Take this as evidence of the power of social media in today’s political landscape.

Now, let me return to the larger perspective of how the mental health of individuals and societies is affected by social media. It is argued by one analyst that social media is a problem because it gives stupid people power. It allows dumb people to think that they are clever.

One question that is seriously posed is this: does the use of social media decrease your IQ over time? An IQ researcher cites increased consumption of digital media and entertainment as well as less time spent reading and writing as likely factors behind falling IQ scores in the United States.

A psychologist associated with the Oxford University Press said that the popularity of the word – brain rot – is a ‘symptom of the time we’re living in’. Brain rot is defined as the supposed deterioration of a person’s mental or intellectual state, especially viewed as the result of overconsumption of material considered to be trivial or unchallenging. The word gained traction on social media among Gen Z and Gen Alpha communities but is now being used in the mainstream as a way to describe low-quality, low-value content found on social media.

A statement by the Oxford University Press, publisher of Oxford Dictionaries, said that the chosen word “describes our dissatisfaction with the online world and it is a word that we can use to bundle our anxieties that we have around social media”.

One important development relating to the use of social media was recorded last week when Australia approved a social media ban for children aged under 16. This happened after an emotive debate that has gripped the nation. The law forces the tech giants – from Instagram and Facebook to TikTok – to stop minors from logging or face huge fines. A trial of methods to enforce the law will start in January.

This will be a test case for a growing number of governments which have legislated or said they plan to legislate an age restriction on social media amid concern about its mental health impact on young people.

On this subject, I have seen several references to a book published earlier this year. It is ‘The Anxious Generation’ by a renowned American social scientist, Jonathan Haidt. Its sub-heading is: ‘How the great rewiring of childhood is causing an epidemic of mental illness’. The book’s focus is on the spread of smartphones and social media among children.

The Guardian, in its review, called the book “an urgent and persuasive warning about the toll of ‘phone-based’ childhoods”. The review notes that at the start of the 2010s, rates of teenage mental illness took a sharp upward turn, and they have been rising ever since.

I wonder if educators and parents in Pakistan have any plans to keep smartphones at least out of schools.

The writer is a senior journalist. He can be reached at: ghazi_salahuddin@hotmail.com