How to regain our focus and attention

At the end of 2024, the Oxford English Dictionary announced its word of the year: brain rot. The first recorded use of the term was in 1854 in Henry David Thoreau’s novel “Walden.” Thoreau lamented how people seemed incapable of nuanced thinking—choosing to take ideas at face value rather than appreciate their full complexity—interpreting this as indicative of society’s intellectual decline.

In modern colloquial usage, brain rot has been redefined to capture how people’s excessive online content consumption is leading to shorter attention spans and diminished critical thinking skills. While often used as a joke or in a self-deprecating context, the frequent usage of the phrase, which skyrocketed to 230 percent since 2023, especially among Gen Z and Gen Alpha, reflects the public’s growing concern about the current state of our mental capacity. As Casper Grathwohl, president of Oxford Languages, observed, “It demonstrates a somewhat cheeky self-awareness in the younger generations about the harmful impact of social media that they’ve inherited.”

Psychologists who study cognition have found that the brain’s executive function, which is responsible for decision-making, problem-solving, and focus, is not designed for heavy-duty multitasking. As we constantly switch between responding to texts, watching videos, and handling tasks—we experience the “switch-cost effect.” The brain has to keep refocusing and reprioritizing, impairing its ability to function well. Over time, this creates a vicious cycle: the more we allow ourselves to get distracted, the more fatigued our brains become, and the more vulnerable we are to further distractions.

Our brain even gets so attuned to constant diversions that it begins to look for it. Social media platforms are designed to play into humans’ desire for novelty and connection—rewarding us with a dopamine hit, which produces feelings of satisfaction and pleasure. Our brain cannot help but associate the constant scrolling with a sense of gratification, even when aware of its negative consequences. Last year, a United States mental health center issued guidance on recognizing and mitigating the effects of brain rot, emphasizing the urgent need for intervention among children and teens, whose developing brains are especially vulnerable.

One powerful antidote to brain rot lies in the pursuit of a flow state—a term in positive psychology that refers to the optimal state of concentration in which a person becomes fully engaged with an activity that they lose track of time and nothing else seems to matter (often called “being in the zone” in layman’s term). Researchers who tried to understand flow through the experiences of artists and athletes found that not only are people most productive when they are in a flow state, they also seem to be at their happiest.

A key component to achieving flow is challenge-skill balance. A task should not be too difficult which will cause a person to be demotivated, or too easy for the person to become bored. Flow is most likely to occur when pushed slightly beyond one’s current skill level. Second, the activity must be personally compelling—a pursuit that the person will find meaningful or enjoyable. Lastly, the person must be able to direct all their mental energy toward fulfilling it, so all distractions and multitasking must be eliminated. Experts recommend carving out 90 minutes for undisturbed flow.

For me, flow often comes through writing with a weekly deadline. Since I have to juggle my Monday column alongside work and other responsibilities, I had to devise a structured schedule. I set aside time on Thursdays and Fridays for research and on Saturdays and Sundays for writing. I put my phone on airplane mode during these time blocks to maintain focus. Although it still takes a bit of dilly-dallying before I get to a flow state, regularly zoning on a task helps instill the self-discipline to better regulate my online activities and to develop a healthy detachment from my phone.

This experience led me to reflect on how schools approach attention spans. Top US universities have observed that many college students struggle to read long texts because high school teachers have replaced novels with shorter selections to keep them better engaged. Research shows, however, that a student’s attention span is not fixed. Rather, it fluctuates depending on how engaging a student finds the learning material and how well it is presented in class. Instead of simply accommodating shorter attention spans, perhaps educators should reimagine the learning experience. Faced with a classroom with diverse skill levels and abilities, we need to be more creative and intentional in designing differentiated activities: ones that are meaningful, appropriately challenging, and capable of fostering a flow state. This will counter brain rot by nurturing the students’ concentration ability, helping them rediscover the joy of sustained attention.

As Thoreau’s writings might suggest, the cure to the epidemic brain rot lies in a return to deliberate, meaningful engagement with the world. It’s time to reclaim our focus and attention.

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eleanor@shetalksasia.com