‘It speaks to me in brain rot’: Theorising ‘brain rot’ as a genre of participation among teenagers

In 2024, Oxford University Press made ‘brain rot’ – a piece of teenage slang found primarily on the popular video sharing application TikTok – its word of the year . This announcement was received by a public discourse of media panic wherein ‘brain rot’ was understood primarily as a threat to young people’s mental and physical wellbeing. This article seeks to challenge this discourse, building on the participatory approach to children’s media scholarship to argue instead that ‘brain rot’ constitutes a complex, and historically situated, genre of participation . Drawing on empirical data from seven TikTok workshops with 16- and 17-year-olds in Oslo, ‘brain rot’ is conceptualised as a collection of related practices that (1) are childish or unserious, (2) provide no cognitive or developmental benefit, and (3) are deliberately non-productive. In this way, it can be understood as a decompression-driven genre of participation whereby young people actively resist the pressures of productivity and self-optimisation.