A bit dumbfounded and just had to express it.
I had a 7 hour flight a couple of days ago and it had free wifi on the flight. Neat, I get to message people on the plane. However, I feel that for that long you still bring a book, or puzzles, or in my case I brought my Deck and played games for the duration of the flight.
The guy next to me though watched TikTok for the entire flight. 7 hours of constant stream of algorithm content to his face. I kind of understand why it’s so addicting, it just keeps coming and coming with no end. I was just astonished with how he could keep going for 7 hours. An hour fine, it’s a lot but we’ve all lost ourselves for an hour. 7 hours of constant feed though.
Idk, people come here to Lemmy and the Fediverse and say there isn’t enough content. Well if 7 hours of content like that is expected it’s too freaking much. If anything I feel I’m much healthier with social media now. Maybe they’re angry because it feels more like a withdrawal.
No real point to this post beyond that. Just a very interesting thing to witness.
I think this is quite different from video games and books from a psychological standpoint. But even reading a book for so many hours straight is impressive, as it does require some mental energy to keep being invested and imagining the scenarios in your head when reading.
A constant feed of short videos with content that is designed to stimulate thought and provoke emotions/reactions however, I’d say it’s almost inhuman to actually invest yourself for this many hours for such. Whence brainrot as a term originates, I suppose; becoming desensitized and unresponsive with no deeper thoughts to impressions.
There are healthier, or, less unhealthy things to do for 7 hours straight. This guy has my sympathies.
reading book is pretty healthy even for long periods of time.
I think you hit on it, I think it may be brain rot and attention spans. People say they get bored playing video games now, and no question about reading. I think you’re right, if you consume a constant barrage of that sort of content, your brain will change.