<\/svg><\/span><\/button><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/aside>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\u201cBrainrot\u201d is what many people call the chaotic, fast-moving memes, sounds and catchphrases that spread across TikTok, Roblox and online gaming and into playgrounds. An example is the endlessly repeated chant of \u201csix-seven\u201d, which still echoes through houses and schools across the country \u2013 to the bewilderment (or annoyance) of many teachers and parents.<\/p>\n
But if you\u2019ve ever said \u201cI\u2019ll be back\u201d in a mock-Arnie voice or asked \u201cyou talkin\u2019 to me?\u201d, you\u2019ve already engaged in a form of brainrot. The instinct to repeat and remix lines from the culture around us is nothing new.<\/p>\n
What has changed is the source material. For young people growing up in a digital world, quotable moments don\u2019t come from films or TV but from TikTok edits, Roblox streams, speedrun memes, Minecraft mods (modifications) and the fast-paced humour of online gaming.<\/p>\n
Hearing a child burst into the looping \u201cSkibidi dop dop dop yes yes\u201d audio from the Skibidi Toilet trend, or repeat a surreal line from a Roblox NPC (non-player character), might sound like nonsense to adults. For the younger generation these fragments slot neatly into a fast-paced, highly referential style of humour. Today\u2019s equivalents are faster, more layered and often more chaotic, with that chaos very much part of the appeal.<\/p>\n
Although brainrot is often used knowingly and with a touch of irony to describe these phrases, remixing and repeating fragments of media has always been part of how people connect. It creates a shared cultural code, a second language made of references, rhythms and sounds that bind groups together and turn everyday moments into opportunities for humour and social connection. In many ways, this style of communication offers lightness and playfulness in a world that can often feel slow and muted by comparison.<\/p>\n
Changing play<\/h2>\n<\/p>\n Brainrot is changing how children play online. Many adults grew up with video games that were built around structure. In Pok\u00e9mon, Zelda or Half-Life, you cleared goals, quests and puzzles to reach endings. Even when games were open-world, giving you nearly total freedom to choose what challenges you take on and when, there was an underlying design logic you were meant to follow.<\/p>\n
Those experiences shaped how we thought about play, and later how we approached designing games and interactive tools in research. Structure, narrative and pacing felt fundamental.<\/p>\n
Watching children engage with today\u2019s digital culture, and particularly with what gets called brainrot, challenges these assumptions. Their experiences aren\u2019t always built around long-form story arcs or carefully crafted mechanics and challenges. Instead, it\u2019s fluid, fragmentary and relentlessly social.<\/p>\n
They jump between Roblox games, short TikTok edits, chaotic Minecraft mods and meme-based jokes without losing the thread. What sometimes looks like disjointed overstimulation to adults is entirely coherent to them. They\u2019re fluent in a form of digital literacy that involves stitching together references, humour, audio, images and interactions at high speed.<\/p>\n
Brainrot and research<\/h2>\n<\/p>\n From a research perspective, this has been a timely reminder that how children engage online changes. Young people aren\u2019t abandoning meaningful play, they\u2019re interacting with an online environment that is dramatically different from the one their parents grew up with.<\/p>\n
There is research that raises questions about whether switching between short, chaotic bursts of content might affect attention or wellbeing for some users. For example, a recent study found associations between heavy use of short-form video apps and poorer sleep in adolescents, but also noted that higher social anxiety partly explained this pattern.<\/p>\n
A broader analysis of a number of research studies reported similar correlations between heavier use and lower scores on attention tasks, as well as higher stress and anxiety. But these findings do not show causation. It remains unclear whether short-form content affects attention, or whether young people with particular cognitive styles simply gravitate towards media that already fits how they process information.<\/p>\n
This shift has changed how we design games for learning. Instead of assuming attention must be sustained in a single direction, we think more about how curiosity works in shorter bursts, how play can be modular, and how meaning can emerge from participation rather than instruction.<\/p>\n
Brainrot may not be something we\u2019d replicate directly in an educational game, but some of its qualities, its pace, its playfulness, its remixing of ideas, can offer valuable prompts for thinking differently about how young people engage.<\/p>\n
The way we learn is constantly evolving and it doesn\u2019t always fit our older frameworks. Rather than resisting that, there\u2019s value in trying to understand it, and in meeting them where they already are.<\/p>\n\nAbout the authors<\/h2>\nOli Buckley is a Professor in Cyber Security, Lilly Casey-Green is a PhD Candidate in Computer Science, and Patrick Scaife is a PhD Candidate in Computer Science all at Loughborough University. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article. <\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
If we want to understand why brainrot resonates so strongly with children, it helps to see it not as meaningless noise, but as a form of social communication. These references work as inside jokes, but ones that can be remixed endlessly.<\/p>\n
This is part of the appeal: brainrot is malleable, collaborative and playful. If you understand it, then you can riff on it, combine it, subvert it, and use it to signal belonging. There\u2019s a enticing level of creativity stitched into the chaos.<\/p>\n
There is also an element of self-awareness in much of brainrot culture. Its absurdity isn\u2019t accidental, it\u2019s part of the joke. In that sense it has echoes of earlier artistic or cultural movements that embraced nonsense or playful subversion. One of the key things is that this isn\u2019t something imposed on children by companies or algorithms. Brainrot is something young people choose to build together, adapting and evolving references within their own circles.<\/p>\n
Brainrot isn\u2019t evidence that young people are disengaged or unimaginative. It\u2019s a reflection of how they make sense of a digital world that is fast, fragmented and overflowing with ideas.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Your support helps us to tell the story From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it’s investigating the financials of Elon Musk’s pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, ‘The A Word’, which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging. At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story. The Independent is trusted by Americans across the entire political spectrum. And unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock Americans out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. We believe quality journalism should be available to everyone, paid for by those who can afford it. Your support makes all the difference. Read more \u201cBrainrot\u201d is what many people call the chaotic, fast-moving memes, sounds and catchphrases that spread across TikTok, Roblox and online gaming and into playgrounds. An example is the endlessly repeated chant of \u201csix-seven\u201d, which still echoes through houses and schools across the country \u2013 to the bewilderment (or annoyance) of many teachers and parents. But if you\u2019ve ever said \u201cI\u2019ll be back\u201d in a mock-Arnie voice or asked \u201cyou talkin\u2019 to me?\u201d, you\u2019ve already engaged in a form of brainrot. The instinct to repeat and remix lines from the culture around us is nothing new. What has changed is the source material. For young people growing up in a digital world, quotable moments don\u2019t come from films or TV but from TikTok edits, Roblox streams, speedrun memes, Minecraft mods (modifications) and the fast-paced humour of online gaming. Hearing a child burst into the looping \u201cSkibidi dop dop dop yes yes\u201d audio from the Skibidi Toilet trend, or repeat a surreal line from a Roblox NPC (non-player character), might sound like n…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10293,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2],"tags":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.seekyourlove.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10292"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.seekyourlove.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.seekyourlove.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.seekyourlove.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.seekyourlove.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10292"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.seekyourlove.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10292\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.seekyourlove.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/10293"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.seekyourlove.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10292"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.seekyourlove.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10292"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.seekyourlove.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10292"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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