There is a small segment of parents who completely prevent their children from accessing these brainrot platforms. Usually these kids are in homeschool groups with other like-minded families, with no phones or screen time.
I often wonder if this cohort will be the future elite class, or if they will be so incompatible with their peers that they'll end up forming insular communities amongst themselves (like the Amish).
> I often wonder if this cohort will be the future elite class, or if they will be so incompatible with their peers that they'll end up forming insular communities amongst themselves (like the Amish).
There's also a third option: They might just turn out normal.
I'm fairly certain (having been homeschooled for a while) that they'll just grow up pretty normal, possibly advanced in some areas but have some part of themselves that feels out of touch since they never participated in the usual social rituals. Socialization is hugely important, and a lot of success is just being a relatable person that's easy to work with. (Once you have grit, education, etc)
No, social media is not like anything else before it. Algorithmic informational hoses are not like television and the harm they do is not like whatever Socrates complained 2500 or so years ago.
Can we try to at least have a normal discussion without repeating the same tired platitudes over and over again
We could, but you're just repeating what everyone from a previous generation said about the next generations preferred entertainment medium.
Also Socrates wasn't the one complaining, he was the one killed by those doing the complaining. A simple mistake to make when one is looking for reasons to do the same.
American TikTok is literally a hyper addictive platform purpose built by the CCP to devour attention, waste time and sow division. It is not the same as television. Its widespread influence is a complete disaster for a healthy republic.
This fees like when our parents were worried about 'maymays' because that's what all the kids were talking about. I could easily see the same panic about how kids are now learning history through these images, and how teachers are assigning homework to make your own meme about a scientific fact.
Ultimately, these formats are passing entertainment and I doub they're going to have too much of an impact.
I am going to go against the grain and say I think these sound great. Reading isn’t that easy for everybody, judging by the large numbers of adults I know who consume audiobooks over print/kindle. Sure, it sounds worse to have your information come as brainrot, but it will probably help lots of students. Reminds me of when I was a kid and you’d see newspaper articles about how note taking by hand is more effective than using a computer (it’s not).
As to the videos, as an adhd kid who studied with the tv on, I guess I just don’t see the problem.
Maybe you know the mind numbing state of brainrot clips or excessive TV watching, back in the old days. Your alpha brainwaves go up as your consciousness tunes down.
I cannot imagine this mind numbing state to create complex and lasting new knowledge.
After learning about nazi torture experiment camps, Japanese torture experiment camps, American torture tests on own citizens etc, yea, I would sadly expect that there is a body of knowledge on the topic :/
Thank you for elaborating on the reference, I still haven't had the chance to see that movie
I guess it is just lacking having students drinking Gatorade at the same time that they "PDF to brainrot" study to ensure that they will be well educated. Because, as you know, "it gots electrolytes"...
quite interesting to see the application of language and speech models for automating current trends.
i wonder about its efficacy, however. don't recall any brainrot videos whose information ever retained with me after the fact.
while i don't actively consume such content, this is definitely an evolution of past internet trends that many of us might have interacted with. like the someone speaking over an unrelated game playing in the background is reminiscent of "commentary" channels on youtube. this is why i would refrain from making any active criticism for those who enjoy this.
Attention building requires work and discipline. It’s really hard to build it up and so easy to lose it. This is just more idiocracy. More and more. Oh well.
> (you can choose from voices like “Sam Sigma,” “Gabi Gyatt,” or “Sara Skibidi,” referring to somewhat meaningless words that are popular among young people who spend a lot of time online)
I find this hilarious because kids know what these words mean as much as they know what any word means. It's adults that don't know what they mean. Unless, of course, they bothered to stop and educate themselves.
Edit: The more I read of this "article" the more I realize it's just rage-bait. sigh
Absolutely with you on the last point, but the Subway Surfers mentioned in this Article is a mobile game which has been around since 2012 - they don't splice in videos with actual subway surfing.
Not that that changes much about the article in general^^
It is still early days, but the oncoming flood of AI content is inevitable at this point. Since modern content is meticulously engineered to snipe children into jumping for the beef with perfect efficiency, killing their reward center instantly, we are well on track to revolutionize education.
The Adtech era is over. Addiction science as an industry shall bring forth the age of brainrot maxxing.
Honestly can't wait. Feed me info in dopamine adjusted methods. My spicy meatball brain finds old methods boring af and an absolute chore. Can learn at 10x with the new ways. Much like the meme watch a 4hr movie in one go? Meh. Feed me a 10 hour movie in 14 40ish min episodes? Hell yeah!
Education needs to strap itself in and get with the times. No point holding onto the old ways just because it's what we did as kids. Wanna feed em a 60 min lecture? Give em 30 to 60 small clips of high interest action!
I don't think there's much evidence you'll learn a lot that way, and certainly not 10 times as much as someone who hasn't been turned into a "spicy meatball" by a social media addiction.
> Give em 30 to 60 small clips of high interest action!
That's such a glib remark. How do you propose to make 30 to 60 small clips per teaching hour? There's over 1200 of those per year. Shortest path through school is 12 years. Good luck making 500,000 of those clips for "what's the capital of Kenia?"
And I'm fairly sure that once you're exposed to them, they'll get boring pretty quickly, and the effect will be nil.
I was a spicy meatball before social media even existed.
It's why it took me 7 years to complete the last 30% of my two degrees. I got bored and went and worked full time in heavy industry. Pretty sure I had adhd well before I even started uni. Fairly sure I was born with it rather than it being a learned condition.
Also Im not sure if the shortest path through school is the goal either. I'm in my late 30s now and I still learn new things every day and still regularly consume education materials every week. I don't ever plan to stop. How arrogant must you be to think you should stop learning once school is over? Hell I've learnt stuff post school that other students learnt in school. I studied business they studied science.
I've done a huge amount of learning in trades and honestly 60 second videos have taught me over a few cumulative hours as many tricks as a decade in construction has.
On the job you only learn what your exposed to and what the people around you know. 60 second videos from anyone anywhere can literally teach me anything because it's not limited to just who I am able to be exposed to now in this minute today.
Hell I've learnt skills from shorts fellas who have spent decades in industries haven't learnt. Stuff that's valuable and saves time. It's all about exposure. Expose yourself to more, learn more. Lectures are slow and exposure is limited when it's just you and whoever the education source deemed suitable to be your teacher.
