After an hour or two spent aimlessly scrolling your social media feed, your mind may feel as soft and sludgy as a forgotten peach in the bottom of a fruit bowl.
The experience is so common it has a name: “brain rot.” In 2024, it was . You might experience it after spending 45 minutes of your one precious life trying to understand an influencer’s relationship drama or getting sucked into a series of AI-generated fruit videos. It can seem like a uniquely contemporary phenomenon.
It’s not.
Catherine Courter, a rising high school senior, discusses the implications of “Civil Disobedience” in her own life. (Photo by Lathan Goumas, University Communications)
“The first occurrence of the phrase ‘brain rot’ in English was in ‘Walden,’ in 1854,” said Piers Gelly, an assistant professor at the University of Virginia.
This summer, Gelly taught a course on brain rot in which students read “Walden,” Henry David Thoreau’s best-known work, to explore whether Thoreau’s cure for brain rot remains relevant today.
Fittingly, their classroom was outdoors, on the patio of the Contemplative Commons and next to the Dell Pond. Gelly said he aimed for an “analog” experience for students. They wrote daily longhand assignments, read a physical copy of the book and forfeited their phones for the duration of class.
Declan Connor, a rising high school junior, says he feels less brain-rotten than his peers because he avoids social media. Still, he says brain rot is “everywhere.” (Photo by Lathan Goumas, University Communications)
On a Monday in late July, eight students wrestled with “Civil Disobedience,” an essay in which Thoreau encourages people to peacefully disobey laws they oppose, as he did when he refused to pay taxes because of his opposition to slavery.
“A summer session is a fun little petri dish where you get to try out things that might not work during the normal semester,” Gelly said.
It is an experiment that is working, his students said.
“You see brain rot all over the place, and of course, the class isn’t using the modern definition of brain rot that many people might think of, but it’s getting you to explore your own ideas in relation to someone else’s thoughts over 200 years ago,” said Declan Connor, a rising high school junior who is taking the course as part of UVA Advance, a summer program that allows ambitious rising juniors and seniors to take a UVA course and receive college credit.
Assistant professor Piers Gelly listens as his students discuss “Walden.” Though the class was as low-tech as possible, Gelly said he regularly experiments with different technology in his teaching. (Photo by Lathan Goumas, University Communications)
Catherine Courter, a rising high school senior also enrolled in UVA Advance, said the course’s analog nature is what drew her to it.
“I definitely feel like I’m pretty brain-rotten,” Courter said. “So the discussions are so much more interesting and more fun than compared to a traditional class where you’re just taking notes on your computer, maybe not even paying attention.”
Phones are mostly off-limits at both Connor’s and Courter’s high schools in Northern Virginia, but until Gelly’s course, they hadn’t handwritten essays in years. Connor was accustomed to using AI to refine his work. They each said handwriting their assignments, including a long essay, was useful.
“You can prompt (AI) with however you want to sound, and use what it generates for you,” Connor said. “But being more original with my thoughts and knowing that I wrote down what I wanted to say, it’s made me more confident in what’s on the page.”
No ebooks here. Each student reads their own hard copy of “Walden,” procured by Gelly. (Photos by Lathan Goumas, University Communications)
Courter added, “I feel like I was writing more meaningfully, which makes sense, because I had a limited amount of paper and a limited amount of time, and writing on paper is just more time-consuming.”
According to Gelly, the goal wasn’t to turn his students into luddites, or persuade them to smash their phones. Instead, he wanted them to think about how they use technology.
