Are we destroying our minds with endless scrolling? Glenn reveals some shocking new evidence that Large Language Models (AI) trained on the same viral, low-quality internet junk we consume every day are experiencing rapid cognitive collapse — reasoning plummets, long-term memory vanishes, and even dark, narcissistic traits emerge. Worst of all? Even when scientists try to “detox” the AI with high-quality data, the damage is permanent. If we don’t choose to feed our minds better content — real books, deep conversation, silence, and reflection — we risk becoming a society that can’t think deeply, care deeply, or live freely… and we might be too far gone to even notice.

Transcript

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GLENN: The average person spends two hours and 21 minutes a day, on social media.

That's the average person! Two hours 21 minutes a day on social media.

Approximately 141 minutes every single day, scrolling.

The average American!

Our on screen time, overall, the average American spends six hours 38 minutes, every day, on screens, connected to the internet!

Oh, my gosh. Wow! Time just gone! Just vanished into -- into, what? Updates? Scrolls? What is it that we're reading?

Seriously, are we -- we exercising our soul with deep thought? Do you know that leash reading in the US has fallen?

Only 16 percent of Americans age 15-plus read for their own enjoyment on an average day? Fifteen [sic]. That number was almost 30 percent in 2003. Fewer books: US adults in 2021 said they read on average 12.6 books a year, down from 15 in 2002 to 2016.

So we're losing reading skills. We're losing deeper thought. We're losing hours of conversation. We're losing how many hours of reflection? At least minutes, maybe 100 minutes.

Our attention spans. How long can you focus on something?

You know, the second screen was different. When we first started TheBlaze, I talked about doing a second screen. Technology, and it wasn't because you couldn't watch something. They're now talking about taking your TV show or your -- your Netflix show, and dumbing it down so much because people are watching or they're scrolling while they're watching the TV. And so they can't follow a complex story line. Oh, my gosh!

We are just going to be stupid slugs. Everything that we're doing online is fracturing attention, memory, and sustained reasoning. And so at what point does this become an epidemic? At what point our are our minds starving for any kind of nutrition as we feed them calories of noise? Now let me tell you the real story. AI is holding a mirror up for us.

There's a new study that came out. LLMs can get brain rot. Okay? That caught my eye. Large language models, LLMs. They are trained on junk web content. So viral, shallow, high engagement stuff.

And all it does is it's just cataloging all this stuff and just consuming all of this stuff that we're scrolling through every day, okay? Do you know what's happening to the LLM?

It's experiencing cognitive decline. It can't -- its reasoning ability is dropping. Falling through the floor. Long context memory, gone!

And dark personality traits, psychopathic tendencies and narcissism has increased. This is within AI. Okay? And when the junk content ratio rose from zero to 100 percent, if you're just scrolling for junk, the reasoning benchmark falls from 75 percent to almost 55 percent.

Its ability to understand long -- you know, long form context, falls from 85 percent, to about 50 percent.

Now, here's the scariest part, they caught this and they're like, holy cow.

Look at what's happening to the large language model. It's completely decaying.

You know, we're just doing it for a year now, and look what's happened. It's not reasoning anymore. It's turning dark. It can't understand long form content anymore.

Let's get it off that!

Let's start putting good, clean stuff into it.

Even after retraining on clean high-quality data, the models never recover the baseline capacity.

Okay?

The rot remains!

As a man or now as a machine thinketh, so he becomes.

I just -- I've been blown away by this study, for the last few weeks. It came out a couple of weeks ago. I had it on my desk, and I wanted to tell you about it. And I just haven't had time.

And I just keep thinking. This is a machine. This is not our brain. This is -- this is a machine that is -- is using the same kind of crap.

I mean, what happens if you don't monitor what you think?

Or worse what?

When we stop thinking?

AI is teaching us a lesson. And I guarantee. This study has been out for weeks!

Never heard it, did you? Nobody is talking about it. It's screaming at us, "Hey, learn a lesson!"

When you feed nothing but lone nutrient attention-hooking, high engagement junk, the capacity to reason, to remember, and to care degrades.

Aren't we seeing this now? Do people care as much as they used to?

Nope! Can they reason?

Nope!

Can they remember what happened yesterday?

Nope. My gosh, don't worry about AI taking over, controlling us. Programming our lives. Look at ourselves. We've already -- we've already signed over our lives to an algorithm.

We're studying AI brain rot!

But is anybody studying, you know, brain, brain rot?

Maybe -- maybe we do recognize it. Maybe we do recognize it. But, you know, we're too apathetic to wean ourselves off the digital era.

It's hard. It is hard. But when the nature of what we ingest for body and mind becomes shallow, the body suffers. But mind sinks deeper.

And we live in an age where we might be less full of nourishment, but full of distraction.

We talk less. We actually listen less. We read fewer books.

You know, where our minds just flit instead of dive. Our attention span, it's almost gone. And make no mistake, this is not just a matter of convenience or lifestyle. This is creeping into the structure of who we are, individually, and collectively.

What is this going to do to -- to our children?

I mean, even if we stopped right now, and we wanted to change, we -- according to the brain rot study.

We won't get that baseline back. Do we pass this stuff on?

Is it getting to a point, to where we're just pumping out morons.

I mean, we're already doing that. I mean, really pumping out morons.

At what point is this an epidemic, where anybody even recognizes it?

When -- when is it where our ability to think critically is so diminished, we cannot be a free people?

Are we there yet?

I told you earlier, I went to the bookstore yesterday. My son and I went to the bookstore.

And I was like, we're getting books!

Because I haven't read. I've been reading online.

It's not the same. It's just not the same.

You've got -- you can't remember. Because you remember sometimes with your fingers. You remember where it is in the book. You know, I can never find anything digitally. I can never find where it is in the pook. I'm -- I'm looking for it.

I can't find it. But I know right where those facts are, if I'm reading a physical copy of a book. And, you know, deep reading. Quiet reflection. Sustained dialogue. Pretty rare! Pretty rare! Our mental health, our social health!

You know, kind of going down. You know, civic health. I wrote it. A little bit. I think we all agree with that.

Even when artificial intelligence trained on junk content degrade in reason, we still feed ourselves the same thing.

Are we going to keep doing that? Or are we going to choose to do something different?

Well, first thing, we have to get people to understand it.

Can we really?

Can we get people to actually listen to this?

And then engage again, in thoughtful reading and conversation. And meaningful silence.

It starts with awareness.

And then choice. What do you permit -- what are you going to put into your body?

What do you permit into your mind?

Otherwise, one day, we'll all look around. And we will realize.

We didn't just lose time. We lost the capacity to deeply think. Deeply connect.

Deeply live.

And then maybe again, maybe we're so stupid and shallow, we won't know.

I'm happy. Are you happy?

What was the question?

What are you saying?

Maybe that's -- maybe that's -- maybe that's a better life!

I love my family!

I don't know who my family is, but I love them! Politics. I don't vote. I haven't voted for a long time. Look at -- (laughter) TikTok! TikTok! TikTok! Okay?

It's up to us, America.