Popcorn brain

Popcorn brain is a state when a person keeps jumping from one idea to another in her mind. You can imagine it similar to how popcorn kernels jump around while making. Popcorn brain means you are not able to focus on a particular thought and quickly get attracted to or distracted by other thoughts stimulated by the next nudge to your brain.

Feels relatable? Don’t worry, you are not alone. In the current times of information overload, we keep stuffing our brain with endless content with different context. This results in too many thoughts getting crowded in your mind at the same time. You keep switching between the apps to get more dopamine hits but if you try to focus on one thing, your brain keeps bringing up other recently visited thoughts too and it feels like even inside your brain thoughts are switching apps. Right there and then, you are experiencing an instance of popcorn brain. In some cases, this makes you forget your daily tasks and even the important stuff too, let alone getting new original ideas.

It’s only valid to ask why it is a big deal to have information overload when we live in the Information Age. The problem is not the deluge of information you are serving to the brain but in this process you are actually losing on important human traits - critical thinking and focus.

A lot of people initially felt that all the information being available on the internet will make humans smarter, but has it actually done that? Most of the time, it seems like people are consuming too much and processing less.

Millions of people are spending countless hours on their screens with a sense of learning but actually not learning anything tangible. For example, you would see so many reels/shorts trying to explain educational concepts by oversimplifying them but has it become a reliable way to prepare for any exams? No, because to actually learn concepts and develop the human mind, one needs to hold on to a concept and think critically in depth about it, solve problems, write answers, build methods and have to repeat this process for a good period of time. Then the actual learning happens.

The overuse of smartphones, social media apps turns your brain into a popcorn brain and starts to impact your personal and professional lives in ways which are difficult to spot. Getting rid of smartphones completely is an impossible task these days but having a better look at our association with smartphones is the need of the hour. Giving your brain some free time from smartphones for a few hours in a day is the most effective way to deal with popcorn brain. Time has come to enable you to take that digital nap. More on digital naps next time.

Let me know what are your thoughts about this and also tell me the ways in which you think smartphone addiction can be solved.