Source: NYT > Education
Article note: Looking at the current college cohort: Brainrot is Real.
We're seeing a lot of formerly-unusual problems that look like executive function disorders. Students who don't know how to focus for long enough to do deep work - even college sophmore focus on a bench for a couple hours "deep." Occasionally even "sit and read this 3 page assignment" deep. Students who turn in lab reports with fever-dream mashups of labs from multiple weeks because they barely know what happened or when.
It's visible as a third peak on some exams that are usually bimodal.
It's justifiably freaking a bunch of my colleagues out.
I'm not sure what exactly it is about the tasp of continuous dopamine hits from short-form content that leads to it, but something always makes me uncomfortable about even hearing that shit.
I think there might be some conflating factors on the political apathy front, this generation grew up learning that a staggering fraction of supposed public servants are monsters who almost flauntingly won't be held accountable for anything, ever, and watching mass movements have essentially no effect (Remember OWS? Remember how absolutely nothing came of it?).
The lack of a thriving youth movement in opposition to Trump is a canary-in-the-coal-mine warning of the deterioration of American exceptionalism.
