Recently, I came across an 1899 article titled “Why Are Our Brains Deteriorating?” by Henry Elsdale. Sound familiar?
At first, it may be surprising to hear of such an article existing around the turn of the 19th century, but at the time Elsdale described the environment as distinctly and increasingly unfavorable to the development of intellect or creative talent despite increasing access to knowledge. Rapid innovation and new waves of consumable media have historically incited claims of society-wide mental degradation, making our modern concerns about sensationally distorted news called yellow journalism, corporate control, AI-slop and brainrot far from new.
Elsdale’s article discusses how fewer people master a field of study, yet the academic rigor they endure reduces creative capacity. It discusses how newspaper “Tit-Bits”— telling the most abridged, captivating versions of stories — are a symptom and result of decreasing attention span and increasing impatience. It also highlights how industry and corporations run a competitive, hurried society that drives the pursuit of money and has ensnared much of the population. Taken together, working for little money for large corporations leaves negligible room for academic or creative development, pushing a hurried lifestyle that leaves only brief time to read Tit-Bits to feel up to date, but no goals are truly fulfilled, dulling the mind to monotonous mediocrity.
Many of these arguments feel familiar today, with long years of academia from the ages of four or five to 17 or 22 — or even into their 30s when attempting to master their field with a doctorate. These years of rigid learning, especially the rules learned in early elementary school to be quiet, obedient, hasty and always attentive, deplete the freedom believed necessary to have creative thought or execute the undertaking.
Yet, despite the rigor, literacy rates are decreasing, and high school seniors are gradually losing even basic proficiency in reading and writing, achieving the lowest scores in the history of the National Literacy Institute since it began in 1991. This far surpasses the article’s assertion that mastery was only accessible for advanced adults. Now, even introductory standards are not being met by young students early in their academic lives. As a result, youth are less likely to pursue academic or creative paths.
If these literacy rates continue to decline, society risks losing critical thinking skills or even basic reading comprehension. Without these skills, individuals cannot understand how their society treats or mistreats them or accurately understand the reliability of the media content they consume, leaving individuals and society at large vulnerable to exploitation, manipulation or plain ignorance.
This inability to detect misleading information becomes a bigger problem as short-form content, which many young people use to get news on pop culture and world events, grows. These shorts are the modern equivalent of Tit-Bits, though they are less likely to be written and produced by journalists. Like yellow journalism, shorts provide dramatized summaries of stories designed to draw in viewers and make them feel informed without providing context, nuance or even accuracy. As generative AI becomes more common on social media, shorts are increasingly indistinguishable.
This form of “news” capitalizes on our shrinking attention spans and societal impatience, driving these traits while also reflecting society’s inability to pay attention for more than a few seconds. Unlike Tit-Bits, shorts use bright colors, fast-moving graphics and gameplay to give the viewer something to watch while they are fed the story. The rapid input from just one short video trains the brain to pay attention to shorter and more visually stimulating content over time, reducing attention span and interest in things that seem dull by comparison.
This phenomenon, coupled with declining literacy rates, shows a trajectory toward more misleading, mind-numbing content and low comprehension skills, which cannot perceive that they are being made to rely on sensationalized, highly stimulating content.
On TikTok and Instagram Reels, I have also seen ads that incentivize people to use generative AI apps to create visually stimulating shorts and send shocking news to friends instead of texting or calling. In these cases, the employment of generative AI not only serves as a way to grab the receiver’s short attention span but also outsources creativity in a quick way that demands nothing from the prompter.
While Tit-Bit articles are transforming into even shorter, dramatized digital videos, raising concerns about cognitive decline surpassing the impetus for concern in 1899, it is still not surprising. As our modern world has only exacerbated the societal and lifestyle issues Elsdale noted, created by mass production, corporate greed and the incessant pursuit of money that drives everyone to work long hours for their entire life, there has not yet been a recovery from them.
Though the introduction and reintroduction of these problems, and the subsequent panic, form an endless cycle, this does not mean these issues will remain liveable when left untreated. Though people continuing to live worthwhile lives in the present day — 127 years after Elsdale’s article — serves as evidence that society carries on functioning regardless of concern for cognitive deterioration and societal degradation, we cannot assume undeniably that this will continue to be the case at the current rate of educational and creative decline.
Though a “Wall-E” situation, where we all sit endlessly in front of screens while AI-powered machines run the world, is unlikely in the immediate future, combating cognitive deterioration and incessant stimulation now is essential to maintaining our long-term ability to problem-solve.
Allison Bonaventura is a junior double-majoring in comparative literature and anthropology.
Views expressed in the opinions pages represent the opinions of the columnists. The only piece that represents the view of the Pipe Dream Editorial Board is the Staff Editorial.