Oxford University Press names "brain rot" as its 2024 word of the year in a nod to modern scrolling habits. "The term has taken on new significance in the digital age."

The phrase “brain rot” spiked 230 percent from 2023 to 2024, according to the makers of the Oxford English Dictionary

The first recorded use of “brain rot,” according to Oxford University Press, was in Henry David Thoreau’s Walden, published in 1854. “While England endeavours to cure the potato-rot, will not any endeavour to cure the brain-rot, which prevails so much more widely and fatally?” wrote Thoreau in his treatise on transcendentalism.