How BRAINROT is rewiring your brain | Cinematic Documentary

0:06 Lately, I've been noticing things, tiny little details everywhere I go, and they all create this sense of uneasiness in me. Cap drivers are speeding through reels while on the highway. Every mother or housewife I've recently met is deep into level 6,000 of Candy Crush. Tasty. Our bathroom breaks have gotten so much longer and dinner dates have started to feel quite quiet. Clearly, there's something a miss. An invisible virus of sorts is spreading. We're changing little by little.

0:57 [Music] Something is rotting. ing our attention [Music] and I needed to know what is causing it. [Music] This is Coco Melon, every infant's

1:43 favorite show. It has 193 million subscribers on YouTube and over 200 billion views. [Music] Co melon. [Music] What you're seeing here is how children react to the Coco Melon soundtrack. They're put into an almost translike state. And this happens by design. But their success is backed by a sinister little experiment. See, what they would do is trap a child in front of two screens. On one, Coco Melon would be playing and on the other, visuals of regular everyday activity that a child

2:29 couldn't care less about. They'd then note down every point where the child was losing interest in their program, and they'd later fill those points with oversaturated colors or sudden movements that triggered a response in the infant. That way, the child would have to keep watching whether they wanted to or not. And if you really think about it, this is very hard to differentiate from an actual drug addiction. [Music] Clearly, the situation is terrifying for children. But what about you? Okay, imagine you're just back home from work after a long day. You take out your phone to feel a tiny little upper. You wonder if there's been any notifications in the last few hours and log onto your favorite social media app. Except

3:18 it takes a split second before your notifications are revealed. This isn't because of your slow internet speed or some glitch. It's a calculated move by tech giants who understand that by creating anticipation, they'll be able to trigger more dopamine in your brain. Hence, ensuring that you are more addicted to the process of checking notifications than the notifications themselves. This is one of countless tricks used by tech giants. The key word here is addiction and it's happening right under our noses. I mean, it's exactly the kind of thing that a that a hacker like myself would come up with because you're exploiting a vulnerability in in human psychology. the inventors,

4:03 creators, it's all of these people um understood this consciously and we did it anyway. The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime estimates that 64 million people worldwide suffer from drug addiction. Meanwhile, the number of people who suffer from social media addiction is estimated to be around 210 million. The drug cartle business has had centuries to amass such a huge market share. But the dopamine cartle is just an emerging startup in comparison and it's already got three times the market share. See, what keeps me up at night isn't my own dopamine dependencies. It's when I think about the kind of content today's generations are exposed to and what effects it could be having on their

4:48 brains. I mean what the is this? This virus cannot spread further and yeah it is a virus because it has infiltrated our culture in the blink of an eye and before it fully corrupts the last few brain cells we have left, we have to understand its symptoms. how it affects your ability to focus, your ability to remember things, and even your ability to think critically. Hopefully, we can still fight it. So, let's break it down. This is the dorso lateral preffrontal cortex. That's the part of your brain that's

5:34 responsible for your ability to focus and pay attention. And that's our first pit stop. Let me ask you this. Have you noticed yourself or people around you losing their train of thought more often lately? Or maybe you find yourself often saying the phrase, "Wait, what were we talking about? Do you want to know why that is? On the left is a kid from your parents' generation. She wants attention, but her mom is busy doing 200 things simultaneously like moms usually do. She doesn't give up and does what she knows best, throwing a tantrum. Eventually, this devious little child manages to

6:19 manipulate her mom into giving her the attention she needs. On the right, we have the modern-day kid. His parents handed him a tablet and access to dopamine-driven content for children found on the internet. a perfect recipe to avoid his tantrums. This kid doesn't know it yet, but not getting his parents' attention is now causing him to lose his ability to pay attention when needed. Why? Because his prefrontal cortex is being fed so much dopamine so fast and so often. For your brain to normalize these levels of dopamine spikes would result in your baseline being raised, which means that anything lesser would make you go, "Nope, let's move on to something else." In fact, you might already be

7:04 experiencing some of these symptoms like your frustration when the Wi-Fi speed is slow or your need to watch YouTube videos at 1.2x speeds or why children are facing a social media crisis so prematurely. Research suggests that our attention spans have reduced from 2.5 minutes in 2003 to under 47 seconds in recent years. So I guess what I'm trying to say is [Music] Sorry, what was I talking about? You uh you were talking about attention spans, right? My bad. Sorry, I got distracted by you. We'd like to thank our partner for this video, Udu. We have spoken in the past about ODO's customizable suite of apps that has helped scale multiple businesses, but this time UDO is

7:52 bringing more than 20,000 experts under one roof for you to network and learn from at UDu community days and we will be there as well. So across days, you will find 200 plus sessions from influencers and guest speakers. Plus, you'll have product demos, interactive zones, amazing food and music that you can vive to. And there's an afterparty as well. You'll also get an early look at the latest and most improved version of ODO that's ODO 19 and learn how to leverage its new features to work for your organization. This is happening on the 13th and 14th of August in Gandhiagar. And the best part is you can attend both days for absolutely free and bring your doubts to UDU community days. So what are you waiting for? Sign up for UDO community days from the link in

8:38 description. This is the hippoc campus where memories of past events are stored. And this is the amygdala where all your emotional memories are stored and they function in fascinating ways. I want you to try an experiment. Try to remember a memory of yours. Something you're quite fond of. Perhaps it's a birthday party from a few years ago. Yours back when you still had short hair. Where all your loved ones were there. Even your partner at the time was there. No, not her. The one with the straight hair. She'd come all the way from Delhi for your birthday. And she brought your favorite cake. What was it?

9:25 Diramisu. No, wait. You hate tiramisu. Was it pineapple? Oh, no. Wait. It was black forest kick. The candles were lit. The laughs were plenty. And it was just the best time ever. Except there's something weird and fascinating about this memory. You're seeing it in third person view. At least seven out of 10 of you are. But when you lift out the memory, you saw it all from a different perspective. No. Happy birthday to you. From your own eyes. It is widely accepted among neuroscientists that most people don't really recall a memory as much as they recreate it. You're not pulling it out of a saved file and revisiting the same

10:10 data each time. Rather, you're remembering the last time you remember this memory. This process is called reconsolidation. But what's more, the emotion you're feeling while recalling a memory often alters the details of the memory itself. This is what allows us to erase all the anxieties and heartbreaks of college and eventually look back at it with rose tinted glasses. What this seems to imply is that your memory is a very unreliable and delicate system and yet it's what gives us our personality. And this incredible but fragile faculty is under attack. It's going through drastic changes because of a process called cognitive processes.

10:55 That's when you externalize or delegate tasks like problem solving, decision making and um memory recollection to devices like calculators, chat, GPT, AI and even teleprompterss. Is that it? This is encapsulated perfectly by something called the Google effect. It refers to the idea that our brains are less likely to remember information if it knows that we can easily find it online. Just this week, an MIT study found that students relying on Chad GPT to write essays had the flattest brain activity patterns and could barely quote their own work minutes later. Evidence of what the researchers called cognitive debt. For today's kids, this is especially concerning since they're largely given

11:40 up on habits like reading and memorizing. They won't be exercising their memory at all. A lot of these kids don't know how to read because they have had things read to them or they can click a button and have something read out loud to them. And looking at the state of things, I think it's time we put active effort towards exercising our cognitive abilities. You know, just on the off chance the apocalypse arrives, destroys civilization, kills Wikipedia, and sends us back to the stone ages.

12:26 What really separates the intelligence of humans and that of other species is, you guessed it, language. Atlantico vocabulary is what helped us communicate the most complex of ideas to each other. You'd be surprised by how ingrained language is to our personalities, our culture, and the very fabric of our being. Let me show you. All right. All right. All right, everybody. Let's calm down because we are moving on to our next category, which is the German language. Let's look up at computer G. So the German word for hand is well hand but the German word for shoe is sure. So

13:12 your question is what is the German word for glove? Option A hand. [Music] Option A. That is correct. [Music] All right, let's settle down because the next one is going to be even harder. The German word for cool is cool. The German word for cupboard is shrink. So

14:00 your question is what is the German word for refrigerator? Option A cool shrink. Option B, option A. Option C, option B. Option C. Ah, you've chosen option C, which is actually option B. And that's option A, which is cool shrank. And that's correct. Let's once again take a look at computer G. The German language is famous for their compound words which combine two smaller words into new complex terms. It's all

14:46 very straightforward and logical, isn't it? There's a study called the sapper warf hypothesis that suggests that language influences but not determines thought. Going by that, it seems to suggest that the Germans approach to their language construction may have had a role to play in their cultures inclination towards logic and precision. But let's look at another language to further explore the hypothesis. Okay, now listen carefully because this is the big one. Let's go. What is the direct English translation for the Spanish term? And this time you get no options at all.

15:35 I think it's I love you. That's actually incorrect. That was actually a trick question. There is no direct translation for tiamo in English. That's right. The closest translation for I love you in Spanish is actually historically was always meant to be used as a far more intense declaration of love. Whereas if you look at English, we only have I love you. And if you wanted to convey something deeper, we generally just add adjectives and metaphors to it. Linguists call this a lexicalization difference. Spanish builds extra rungs into the love ladder so speakers hear and feel finer shades of affection from

16:21 childhood. Maybe that also explains why they are such an emotionally resonant culture. If you want to learn how to make videos like the one you're watching right now, let me give you a glimpse of what it takes. [Music] Are we good to go? Yeah. Okay.

17:22 [Music] Are we good to go? As you saw, it takes an army of people to create and deliver a well-produced video to you guys. And people who can do this are in high demand. With the right training, you can turn video making that's from the concept to the final cut into a high income skill with our video mastery program in less than 3 months. Most of the folks you see here are from our video editing school. So if you're a student, a job seeker, a content creator, or just somebody who wants to get into the field of video making and video editing, our program is the right place for you to start. It will take you from absolute basics and core video editing skills, storytelling, production, motion design, and genai to

18:08 a hireable editor or video producer. We have trained 3,500 students, many of whom are working with some of the top creators and companies. So if you're somebody who wants to learn the skill of video editing, producing videos or are just curious about our program, sign up for the free master class that we are hosting. Link is in the description below. See, language shapes the very essence of your being in complex ways. So the creation of language requires utmost thought and care. Don't you think? Unfortunately, kids today are forming a whole new dictionary for themselves. I say that this goofy air government have been capping. Now I know it's giving to Lulu for this boo. Let's walk in negative

18:54 huru. We've done a whole video on brain rod before but since then this problem has quintupled. Sure this new gen language is a fun and creative way to express abstractions but it's a language that is devoid of careful thought and structure that's essential for communication. Take the feeling of happiness for example. The words here are each meant to depict a very specific degree of happiness. It allows us to gauge a person's feeling based on context. But when it comes to Jendi slang, these words and many more like it that the internet keeps churning out every other week are monotonous and they are replacing and articulate and thoughtful vocabulary that we have built over a millennia. Language evolves over time, yes, but there's a growing concern amongst linguists and cognitive

19:40 scientists that this new shift may be eroding a child's ability to communicate complex ideas. We may not be at much risk as we are part of the transition period, but for kids tomorrow, the dependence on quick and easy forms of speech could weaken their ability to structure sentences and think critically. I recently read that the average Indian spends 5 hours a day on their phone. That's six whole days a month, two and a half months a year, and around 15 years in your lifetime that you may end up doom scrolling. Another study claimed that the average person finger climbs the equivalent of Mount Everest every 20 days of scrolling. I'm not sure how to wrap my head around that. You know, when your brain receives gratification at a constant rate, it

20:25 leads to something called anhidonia, the complete absence of enjoyment in your pursuits of happiness. These are statistics that indicate our predicament. However, the newest generations will be born into a world where these statistics aren't shocking. They will be the baseline, the new normal. The consequences are serious. Children with more than 60 minutes of daily screen time show significantly higher signs of ADHD. Even more alarming, early screen exposure disrupts emotional development, dulling their ability to read faces, build empathy, and navigate the social world. To make matters worse, there's a notable lack of regulation concerning the design and dissemination of children's digital content, allowing companies to

21:11 prioritize engagement metrics over the well-being of the children. So, what do we do about this? If you're watching this video, you are probably dealing with the inability to feel as deeply as you used to. And if you've reached all the way to the end, then you've already taken a huge first step in the road to recovery. See, I don't have all the answers, but I can share what's been working for me, and maybe it'll work for you, too. To start off, switch your phone's display into grayscale by accessing your developer settings to avoid all those stimulating and triggering colors. You can even add extensions that actively block out brain rod content. Make sure you track your screen time religiously and even set app limits. These act as daily reminders that you are crossing

21:58 the line. Protect your sleep, which is where your brain resets itself. This basically prevents the blue light from suppressing your melatonin. Next is dopamine rebalancing. This one's tough, but it works. Set aside 30 minutes where you do absolutely nothing stimulating. No phone, no TV, no podcast, no music. And lastly, every night, recount your day and write down one thing you're grateful for. It's basically training your brain on a daily basis to notice the silver lining and naturally rebalance your brain chemistry. Look, I know it's not going to be easy to do all this at first, but keep at it. Every day it gets easier, but you got to do it every day. That's the hard part. [Music]