Sludge Videos Are Taking Over TikTok--And People's Mind

Along with other types of pollution, cognitive pollution is becoming an increasingly acute problem.

If we endlessly scroll through social media, watch reels, and pollute our consciousness with other junk, then the ideas we produce will also be junk. Garbadge in, garbadge out.

Yet, if we take a responsible approach to what we let into our inner world... See more

The analogy of information as sugar is not just rhetoric. A 2019 study by researchers at Berkeley found that information acts on the brain’s dopamine-producing reward system in the same way as food. Put simply, the brain treats information as a reward in itself; it doesn't matter whether the info is accurate or useful, the brain will still crave it... See more

AMANDA MONTELL: I really appreciated this video from Kurzgesagt, which articulates how the current hyper-connected state of the internet has destroyed our collective mental health. The video suggested the glory days of social media were actually the early 2000s, when like-minded users could gather in niche, siloed forums to discuss common interests... See more

The Oxford University Press word of 2024 was “brain rot”— meaning both the “low-quality, low-value content” found online and the intellectual deterioration from its overconsumption. First recorded in Henry David Thoreau’s 1854 book Walden , this year’s uptick in usage is (ironically) attributed to references in TikTok videos.