Because Of TikTok 13 Years Later This Will Happen To Your Brain
What Happens To Your Brain When You Mindlessly Scroll?
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Did you know that the average American touches their phone a brain-melting 2,600 times per day?
Your phone has literally re-wired your neural pathways to turn you into a slavering Pavlovian dog.
Are you currently reading this on your phone? (Well continue reading because you might think differently after this)
The TikTok Lobotomy
I’m talking about short-form content — the endless vortex of super-concentrated, bite-sized content designed to put your brain into a frenzied, dopamine-craving stupor. Think of it as an IV drip of ADHD straight into your cerebral cortex!
Now, I know what you’re thinking: “But Robin, I only spend a couple hours a day max on TikTok! That’s not enough to turn my atrophied brain into zombie pudding, right?”
Well, you couldn’t be more wrong,
A few hours is all it takes for TikTok to start re-wiring your gray matter down a slippery slope of progressively shorter attention spans and higher cravings for that sweet, sweet dopamine hit.
Just wait until you see the effects of 13 YEARS of addiction to those tantalizing, never-ending vertical video feeds! It’s enough to make an A.I. go haywire from overstimulation.
Check this data which predicted our attention span back in 2014, when short from content was not even a thing.
Attention Span of a Toddler
By 2037, anyone who jumped on the TikTok bandwagon in their youth will essentially have the brain of a distracted toddler trapped inside an adult’s body. Forget having a conversation longer than 15 seconds without getting restless. Heck, you’ll be lucky if you can make it through the opening credits of a movie without whipping out your phone to find something more stimulating!
“That’s impossible!” I hear you protesting in a scandalized tone. “My limitless intellectual curiosity would never allow such vapid digital drivel to addle my brilliant mind!”
Oh, you sweet summer child. If only you had any idea the terrifying effects 14 years of watching strangers lip-sync to the same 5 seconds of an overly-processed pop song can have on a human brain.
By 2037, your ability to focus on any one task, conversation, or intellectual pursuit lasting longer than a TikTok clip will be completely decimated. Need to read a book for work or school? Forget about it —
your brain will be rejecting any content over 3 minutes long as vigorously as a cat avoiding a bathtub.
Enjoying an engaging documentary that does a deep-dive on a complex, nuanced topic? Good luck! Unless that documentary is told entirely in overly-edited video fragments under 60 seconds each, you’ll find your eyes glazing over within the first 5 minutes.
Even attempting to follow the plot of a dimwitted rom-com will become an exercise in frustration as your TikTok’ed brain fights to keep up with details lasting longer than a few lines of dialogue.
The Intimacy-Pocalypse
“But wait, Robin!” you frantically interject. “Surely my personal relationships and romantic prospects won’t suffer just because my brain has been softened into an incoherent digital mush by years of blindly chasing those sweet, sweet TikTok verticals!”
Oh, you ignorant sweet pea. Did you somehow miss the growing mountain of research showing how excessive social media usage is directly linked to increased loneliness, anxiety, depression, and overall erosion of genuine human connection?
By 2037, the only personal connections most seasoned TikTok addicts will have are the parasocial bonds they’ve formed with their favorite content creators.
Because after over a decade of obsessively following the daily lives of strangers seeking digital validation through thinly-veiled cries for attention, real-life vulnerability and intimacy will seem like an alien concept.
Comedy, Tragic-ally Unfunny
“No way, Robin, you’ve gone too far this time!” I can hear you furiously typing out in the comments. “My future brain may be an over-stimulated digital blancmange, but my sharp wit and capacity for humor will remain undimmed!”
You clearly haven’t seen the soul-crushing data on how our increasingly short attention spans erode our ability to understand and appreciate even the most straightforward comedy or irony.
Within 13 years, don’t be surprised if formerly side-splitting sitcoms start to feel like incredibly dry affairs, devoid of nuanced comedic timing and narrative payoffs.
By then, your best coping mechanism will be laughing uproariously at the lowest-brow slapstick and maladroit sarcasm, while more sophisticated humor passes you like nothing.
The Anxiety Age
But hey, at least your overall mental health and emotional wellbeing will be A-OK by the mid-2030s after drowning in a sea of Social Media algorithm-induced FOMO and unrealistic portrayals of human experience, right? Right?!
I’m afraid the evidence points to quite the contrary, my delusionally optimistic friend. Thanks to the pernicious effects of its dangerously addictive design, by 2037 the mental health impacts of Social Media may start to reach epidemic proportions.
We’re talking spiking rates of anxiety, depression, loneliness, dissociation, body dysmorphia, and a generation that missed crucial developmental milestones because they were too busy inhaling airborne digital junk food at hyper speed to properly learn how to self-regulate and experience the full depth of human emotion.
From Fun to Fragile
“Now you’re just being an insufferable Boomer doomsayer!” you type back furiously, smudging your phone screen with flecks of digitized spittle. “There’s no way a fun little app could saddle us all with severe psychological issues for over a decade down the line!”
No one wants to accept that the endless stream of hypnotic content they’ve been endlessly bingeing could literally reprogram them into profoundly destabilized human beings.
But science doesn’t lie: Tech that hijacks our brain’s dopamine pathways to create psychological cravings will inevitably corrode our mental fortitude over time.
Satirical Salvation?
Now, I won’t go full-on doom and gloom here. After all, laughter is a great way to cope with even the most depressing inevitabilities! Maybe in 2036, being a relentlessly distracted ball of nerves desperate for constant micro-validation will be seen as hilarious instead of borderline psychotic.
Just imagine the comedy potential of everyday scenarios like struggling to make a simple phone call without periodically bursting into incoherent gigglefits over intrusive thoughts about funny dances and unhinged reaction videos! Dinner conversations where everyone at the table has their phones out, shoveling food down their gullets in silence while swiping through an endless cavalcade of random videos about nothing!
The hilarity practically writes itself when you’re living in a dystopian digital nightmare! Who needs emotionally intelligent connections when you have infinite watch-worthy cringe to endlessly consume?
But alas, even the finest gallows humor can’t fully dispel the ominous storm clouds gathering on the horizon of our collective digital addictions. The path we’re on is simply not sustainable if we want to foster generations of focused, emotionally well-adjusted human beings growing up to become capable leaders, thinkers and innovators.
So What Now?
So here’s my advice.
Everything in moderation!
TikTok can be a wonderful bronzed babadook when used responsibly to enjoy some light, casual entertainment throughout your day. But if you find yourself whiling away multiple hours into the endless scroll while your real-world duties and relationships gather dust, it may be time to log off for a while.
And who knows? Maybe in doing so, you’ll regain enough cognitive function to actually enjoy longer-form content again! You’ll laugh, you’ll ponder intellectual conundrums, you’ll stare wistfully out a window without instinctively reaching for your phone every 15 seconds.
It’ll be the Renaissance you never knew your depleted grey matter desperately needed! Limitless human potential, reborn!
…Or, you’ll just replace one obsessive digital rabbit hole with another, dooming yourself to digital zombification by decade’s end. Frankly, the choice is yours!
Just try your best to preserve the messy complexities of your humanity through it all, dear friends. Never forget that you contain the mysteries of the entire universe within your magnificently over-stimulated brains!
Highlight Key Points:
13 years of TikTok usage will turn your brain into over-stimulated mush with a 3-second attention span
You’ll struggle to follow plotlines, humor, or nuanced conversations lasting over a minute
Personal relationships, emotional depth, and ability to self-regulate will severely atrophy
Rates of depression, loneliness, and other mental health issues will skyrocket by 2037 (not literally 2037)
The comedy itself may become too complex to follow, leaving only cringe and slapstick as laughable
Moderation— don’t let the scroll overtake your capacity for living in the real world!