By Artur Coelho Bezerra*em The Earth is Spherical
Mind rot was the “phrase of the 12 months” for 2024, in keeping with the standard annual election of the Oxford College Pressthe most important college press on the earth. Which might be translated as “mind rot”, mind rot names the deterioration of an individual’s psychological or mental state, particularly seen on account of extreme consumption of fabric thought of banal or unchallenging. The 230% enhance within the frequency of use of the time period between 2023 and 2024, in keeping with Oxford,(i) displays society’s considerations concerning the attainable impacts of extended use of digital know-how to eat irrelevant, non-critical and low-quality content material. Extra particularly, this concern afflicts mother and father and guardians of kids and adolescents who entry digital social networks at an more and more earlier age and in an more and more addictive means.
A symptom of this parental misery is the gross sales phenomenon, in Brazil and overseas, of the e book The anxious era: How hyperconnected childhoods are inflicting an epidemic of psychological issuesby Jonathan Haidt. The social psychologist is a part of a bunch of researchers who’ve highlighted the shut relationship between the business exploitation of digital communication platforms and the rise in charges of despair, anxiousness and different psychological issues within the final 15 years – exactly the interval through which an accelerated growth of synthetic intelligence, neural networks and machine studying.
These superior strategies that engender the manufacturing and circulation of knowledge in digital format have been utilized by the principle know-how conglomerates to encourage the intermittent manufacturing of non-public information by customers of their companies.
As is already identified, in virtually all enterprise fashions structured round digital platforms, the info produced by web customers immediately represents an indispensable enter, be it geolocation information (basic for transport platforms like Uber or supply platforms like iFood ), tastes and preferences (equivalent to these utilized by Amazon, YouTube and Netflix to recommend items and advocate audiovisual content material), or all of this collectively and combined with information on likes, feedback and shares, as solely happens on social networks equivalent to Fb, X, Instagram and Tik Tok. The longer a person is interacting on a platform, the extra private information it’ll produce.
Within the need to seize consideration, the content material introduced on social networks and information pages usually appeals to the emotional response, not mediated by rationality, which communicates with the unconscious and the undomesticated, to seize the gaze, dilate pupils and mobilize thumbs and index fingers, even when for a fleeting second. The structure of the platforms can be designed with this goal in thoughts, as seen within the scrolling infinity of social networks, a form of gamification impressed by slot machines in casinos and cafes, which stimulates nervous fingers to the addictive hunt for informational slots.(ii)
The draw back of the eye financial system, as economist Herbert Alexander Simon mentioned, is {that a} wealth of knowledge ends in a poverty of consideration. That is the present situation of hyperinformation that causes inattention, incapability to pay attention, compulsion and anxiousness in people. As persons are consistently reminded, notified and prodded by digital gadgets that convey data in bulk and sometimes sliced into quick bursts of textual content, video or meme, it turns into more and more troublesome to keep up concentrate on actions that require focus, equivalent to learn a e book and even watch a movie or musical present.
Since tradition is a dimension that presupposes the potential for deep and contemplative consideration on the a part of human beings, the thinker Byung-Chul Han argues that the surplus of stimuli, data and impulses from data applied sciences, mixed with calls for for efficiency (each at work and in private life that’s shared on social networks), tends to shift deep consideration to a type of “hyperattention”, that’s, dispersed consideration that rapidly adjustments focus between totally different actions and sources of knowledge.(iii)
Along with affecting people’ psychological well being and skill to pay attention, the free and unregulated circulation of disinformation and scientific and environmental denialism on digital networks provides rise to fascist extremism, fuels anti-vaccine actions and creates an setting of knowledge air pollution that harms the combating world warming, hate speech in opposition to weak teams and even ailments and pandemics.
The political use of what Marco Schneider calls networked digital disinformation,(iv) with the macro-scale focusing on of pretend information with the purpose of manipulating public opinion and interfering in electoral elections, may very well be adopted within the actions of the corporate Cambridge Analytica throughout the campaigns of Donald Trump, in the US, and the Brexitin the UK, each in 2016.
Revealed in 2018 by former worker Christopher Wylie, the Cambridge Analytica scandal concerned the extraction of non-public information from greater than 80 million Fb customers, which pressured the platform’s proprietor, Mark Zuckerberg, to attend a five-hour listening to. earlier than the US Senate. The case was so critical that the billionaire’s interrogation was broadcast reside on TV, and Mark Zuckerberg was requested to make larger dedication and funding in combating disinformation and moderating hate speech within the digital ecosystem – his firm, Meta, now controls 4 main communication platforms (Fb, Instagram, Whatsapp and Threads), and Fb alone has greater than 3 billion each day hits.
In the course of the interregnum of Donald Trump’s administration, whose Fb account was blocked by Mark Zuckerberg within the wake of the invasion of the Capitol, the community mogul boasted of working with greater than 100 organizations in 60 languages to fight misinformation on his platforms.
Now, with Donald Trump again in energy, the proprietor of Meta goes public – precisely 4 years after banning the extremist Republican from the blue community – to say that he’ll “work with President Donald Trump to fight governments all over the world which might be attacking American corporations and pressuring them for extra censorship”, and declares that he’ll do away with the truth checkers and chill out the filters that average content material on Fb, Instagram and Threads, to “be certain that individuals can specific their beliefs and experiences”.
For Mark Zuckerberg and Meta’s shareholders, the measure means not solely a direct saving of billions of {dollars} that can now not be spent on content material moderation, but additionally a possible enhance in earnings via the intensification of political clashes that generate “engagement” in networks. The predictable impact of this measure is a larger permeability of the community for the circulation of misinformation and hate speech, particularly aimed on the LGBTQIAPN+ neighborhood, as is clear within the permission for customers, based mostly on their political or non secular convictions, to share illness allegations. psychological sickness or abnormality when based mostly on gender or sexual orientation.(v)
And for the billions of people who use Zuckerberg’s social networks, the anticipated consequence is a rise within the mind rot mentioned on this textual content, accompanied by obsessive-compulsive issues, agitation, despair, irritability, empathic insensitivity and all types of psychosomatic issues. It stays to be seen whether or not individuals and governments all over the world are in settlement with this Purpose.
Notes
(i) https://corp.oup.com/information/brain-rot-named-oxford-word-of-the-year-2024/
(ii) Bezerra, A.C. Info distress: moral dilemmas of the digital age. Rio de Janeiro: Garamond, 2024, p. 71.
(iii) Han, B. C. Fatigue society. Petrópolis: Vozes, 2017, p. 31.
(iv) Schneider, M. The age of disinformation. Rio de Janeiro: Garamond, 2022.
(v) https://www.nytimes.com/reside/2025/01/07/enterprise/meta-fact-checking
*Arthur Coelho Bezerra is a professor within the Postgraduate Program in Info Science at IBICT-UFRJ. Acreator of the e book Info distress: moral dilemmas of the digital age (Garamond).
