UNDER THE MICROSCOPE
Recently, Oxford Dictionary announced its word of the year: brain rot, noting its new prominence in 2024 and increased frequency of use to 230 percent from the year before.
Brain rot is defined as “the supposed deterioration of a person’s mental or intellectual state, especially viewed as a result of overconsumption of material (now particularly online content) considered to be trivial or non-challenging.” Oxford President Casper Grathwohl said “Brain rot speaks to one of the perceived dangers of virtual life, and how we are using our free time.”
If this is so, then the Philippines, with its very high consumption of online content, is really in danger of falling off the deep end. Our country has the dubious distinction of being the social media capital of the world, with over 86.98 million internet users (73.45 percent of the population) as of January 2024. This is due to the affordability of mobile data plans and a young tech-savvy population, which promote active social media use.
While Filipinos mainly use social media to keep in touch with friends and family (67.7 percent), other reasons are: 1. Filling spare time (43.4 percent), 2. Finding content (42.3 percent), 3. Staying informed (41.6 percent), 4. Seeing what’s being talked about” (40.9 percent), and 5. Shopping (39.7 percent).
As for internet usage, the Philippines claims the third spot globally, Filipinos spending an average of eight hours and 53 minutes a day online, with social media use claiming three hours and 34 minutes. Filipinos love watching videos online, particularly on vlogs and influencer videos. Top choices of Filipinos are TikTok (40 hours 46 minutes), YouTube (32 hours 40 minutes), and Facebook (26 hours 54 minutes) per month.
This addiction to social media, particularly vlogs and influencer videos, help explain why Filipinos are highly susceptible to misinformation and disinformation. Constant immersion in an environment fostering historical distortions and outright lies has produced a whole generation of young Filipinos indoctrinated with a favorable view of the country’s recent political past, particularly of the martial law era. Recent political developments bolster this hypothesis.
It may explain the bottom dweller status of Filipino students in the PISA scores, since they spend so much time on social media to the detriment of their studies. That a third of all Filipino children suffer from malnutrition and physical and intellectual stunting also factors in the dismal showing of these students and in fostering brain rot since these “intellectual midgets” only have superficial understanding and simplistic thinking which are perfect for mindless videos on Tiktok and nothing else.
Brain rot, then, is very prevalent in the Philippines. The proneness to disinformation and gullibility due to overconsumption of social media has dire repercussions for our political system, wherein voters are easily duped into voting for unfit political candidates. These candidates need only do a song and dance online, and presto, they’re voted into power. It’s not good for our economic growth as well since we cannot produce the kinds of workers we need due to lack of the necessary mindset and social skills required for modern-day jobs. Instead, we are producing unskilled and uneducated workers fit only for menial jobs.
The Australian government has recently passed a law banning social media use of children under 16 in an effort to combat the untoward effects of constant exposure to social media of very young children. We can foresee other countries following suit and social media companies will surely try to oppose these moves. Whether or not the move will curb the evils spawned by malign forces using social media tools remains to be seen.
Alternatively, Collins Dictionary’s word of the year is “brat,” which is given new meaning in our political scene nowadays. The supposed bratty behavior of the current first in line to the top position in the country is making headline news not just locally, but internationally. It certainly doesn’t give a good impression of the country abroad, but also seems to be a tactical move to distract from the real issues of possible corruption in high government offices.
While bratty behavior will be a temporary phenomenon, brain rot is deep-seated and will continue to haunt the country for years to come. I would bet my bottom dollar on Oxford’s word of the year.
(Note: Figures quoted are from The Digital 2024 study by We Are Social and Meltwater.)