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Is doomscrolling on your phone unhealthy for your brain? Oxford University Presss word of the year, brain rot, seems to suggest so. It defines the condition as the supposed deterioration of a persons mental or intellectual state, especially viewed as a result of overconsumption of material (now particularly online content) considered to be trivial or unchallenging. The key word, though, is supposed, as there is there is no such thing as mindless scrolling, says Dr. Aditi Nerurkar, the author of The 5 Resets: Rewire Your Brain and Body for Less Stress and More Resilience and a Harvard physician who specializes in stress. Brain rot is not a word or phrase that I would use as a physician, because it connotes that our brains are passively withering away, she says. Scientifically what is happening to your brain when you sit and scroll and scroll is not passive. [Scrolling] has a very active effect on your brain, and it signals all sorts of hormones and chemical cascades and neural circuits. While thats a relief, we do love our digital devicesmaybe too much. According to a recent survey by Reviews.org, Americans pick up their phones an average of 205 times a day. Eighty percent check their phones within the first 10 minutes of waking up, and 43% consider themselves to be addicted. Having a true addiction to your phone is rare, says Nerurkar. Whats common, though, is popcorn brain, a term coined by University of Wisconsin researcher David Levy. Popcorn brain is the sensation of your brain popping when you spend too much time online, explains Nerurkar. Its when you’re chronically online, overconsuming. It has an effect on your sleep, your mood, your emotional reactivity, irritability, fatigue, and in some cases, anxiety, depression, and insomnia. Finding balance If you feel popcorn-y, finding a sene of balance can help. But where do you start? Howard Lewis, author of Leave Your Phone at the Door: The Joy of OFFLINE, says its not the technology thats the problem, its a growing fear of missing out. I think there’s a fear of being irrelevant, he says. The advent of social media has made the problem much worse. People used to get their news from newspapers, and the process could take three or four days. Now, if you wait more than three or four hours, there is a sense that youre not very relevant, and I think that’s a big error of judgment. There’s a fine line between consuming and overconsuming, and the first thing to do is to cut yourself some slack about your phone habit. Doomscrolling is a primal urge, says Nerurkar. Your brain is governed by the amygdala, and the main purpose of your amygdala is survival and self-preservation, she explains. Back when we were all cave people, there would be a night watchman who would scan for danger while the others slept. In modern times, we are all our own night watchman. The modern equivalent of scanning for danger is scrolling. To find balance, you need to get your prefrontal cortex online. This is the part of the brain that governs strategic thinking, complex problem-solving, and adulting, says Nerurkar. Building healthy phone habits intentionally dials it down, she says. The goal is to become more intentional with your media use. The truth is that the environment and big tech and the news is going to continue. Your brain and body is doing exactly what it was intended to do when you’re feeling stressed. Its not about abstinence from our devices. Its about creating some digital boundaries to preserve your mental health while remaining informed to what’s happening in the world. How to build healthier habits with your phone Nerurkar teamed up with the mental health app Calm to create a five-part series called Building Healthier Phone Habits. The first step toward becoming more intentional about your media consumption is an awareness of your current state. Start by monitoring a three- to four-hour block of time. Put a pen and paper nearby and every time you have the urge to pick up your phone, create a tally mark. At the end of the time block, identify how many times you felt like reaching for your phone. Next, address the urge with a three-second brain reset exercise called Stop, Breathe, Be, which helps you strengthen your mind-body connection. Instead of giving into the impulse to reach for your phone, stop, take a deep breath in and out, and be in the moment, says Nerurkar. What it does over time is it decreases the volume of your amygdala and gets that prefrontal cortex back online. Another strategy is leveraging the grayscale of your phone. Nerurkar recommends switching your phone off color mode and into black-and-white mode. Go to your Settings page. Tap on Accessibility and then Display and Text Size. Switch your color filters to grayscale. You can easily toggle the grayscale on and off. What it does is it makes scrolling less addictive, less enticing, says Nerurkar. Good times to use grayscale are when you’re trying to focus on a task at work, but you notice that you keep reaching for your phone and you’re not able to finish that task. It’s a visual boundary that you’re creating. Building healthier phone habits is a process, so give yourself lots of grace, says Nerurkar. Compassion, and particularly self-compassion, helps rewire the brain and decrease your reliance on your devices, she says. It also decreases the volume of your amygdala. Why detachment is important Phones and applications may be enticing, but they offer less value than we think, says Lewis. They do provide a sense of comfort and belonging, which is fine, but the difficult thing is that they become a replacement for adjunct and real-life conversations, he says. Lewis regularly hosts dinner parties where guests must leave their phones at the door. He recommends breaking the cycle of dependence by putting your phoneaway wherever youre engaging with someone in person. People have certain preconceptions about the way they should look and behave around others, he says. What matters most is that you give people your time and your attention in a meaningful way. By leaving your phone at the door, you are enabled to embrace life. Give yourself permission to be different by untethering yourself from your device, urges Lewis. Being offline opens the door to randomness and serendipity, he says. Life behind a screen, in my opinion, is not real life.
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E-Commerce
The Great Gatsby, 1925 Maintaining relevance after 100 years in the public consciousness is no small feat, but thats exactly what the American novel The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald has managed to do. First published by Charles Scribner’s Sons on April 10, 1925, it initially received mixed reviews and was a commercial failure. As this now-beloved novel celebrates its centennial, how did it finally find an audience and what are its most-enduring themes? Also, here’s to maybe catch a bit of the bash. From failure to required reading Fitzgerald died in 1940 from a heart attack thinking he had failed as a writer. What he didn’t know was that Gatsby had been chosen by the Council on Books in Wartime as one of the titles to be distributed to WW II soldiers waiting in army barracks to eventually be shipped overseasand it clearly had a massive trickle-down effect. The soldiers identified with the character of Jay Gatsby and the themes of disillusionment and loss. This newfound popularity made literary critics take a second look. The book would find its way onto college syllabuses and later become required reading for high schools. It also inspired adaptations in various cultural mediums, such as musicals, movies, ballets, and more. Enduring themes The story is told through the eyes of Nick Carraway, a World War I veteran and Yale graduate, who moves from the Midwest to Long Island where he meets the enigmatic, flashy, “self-made” millionaire Jay Gatsby. Gatsby is famous for throwing extravagant parties at his Long Island mansion, embodying the Jazz Age and raucous Roaring Twenties, in hopes that his ex, Daisy Buchanan, will attend. The fact that she is already married to Tom Buchanan, a violent Yale graduate who comes from old money, doesnt stop Gatsbys obsessive pursuit. But with all that extravagance, illicit alcohol (this was the Prohibition, after all) and unrequited love, tensions are sure to boil over with deadly consequences.This short novel explores themes of class, the dark truth of the American Dream, corruption, and obsession. A hundred years later, the ’20s of a new century dont feel all that different from its predecessor, the 1920s. Heres how book lovers can celebrate In Gatsby celebrations (and real estate!), location is the thing. If you find yourself in or near Fitzgeralds birthplace of St. Paul, Minnesota, head over to the Minnesota History Center. On April 10, from 1 p.m. to 7 p.m. local time (CT), a live reading of the novel is scheduled, featuring a variety of readers. Also at the Center is an exhibit, Thats My Middle West: F. Scott Fitzgeralds St. Paul, which showcases artifacts from Fitzgeralds early life along with Gatsby memorabilia, and runs through May 31. Princeton University, Fitzgeralds alma mater, is also celebrating Gatsby’s centennial and its favorite son throughout the month. A special exhibit at the Firestone Library called Living Forever: The Archive of The Great Gatsby opens April 10. A roundtable discussion titled Whats So Great About The Great Gatsby? will be held April 28. New York City, the setting of much of Gatsby, couldnt let this 100th birthday go without a toast or two. The Empire State Building is turning green in commemoration, a nod to the glowing green light on Daisy’s dock that Gatsby gazes at from his lawn across the bay. Broadway is home to the 2023 Tony Award-winning musical adaptation of the novel. On April 10, the cast will have a special toast with audience members being gifted a special anniversary collector’s item souvenir. Also, the Midtown bar Oscar Wilde is throwing an all-day Gatsby-themed soirée, replicating the Roaring Twenties, with lots of music (DJ, 6 p.m. to 11 p.m.) and extravagant cocktails. If you can’t make it to any of these locations. never fear, old sport. Throw your own Gatsby movie night. Jack Claytons 1974 offering starring Robert Redford in the title role is available to rent on Amazon with the MGM add-on. No add-ons needed to rent the 2013 Baz Luhrmann flick starring Leonardo DiCaprio. Pop some bottles and step into the Jazz Age. Maybe Fitzgerald will feel the long-sought admiration from his grave in Rockville, Maryland.
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E-Commerce
The price of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies surged after President Donald Trump said he authorized a 90-day pause on tariffs for countries that havent retaliated against the U.S. The price of Bitcoin rose about 6% to nearly $82,000, while other cryptocurrencies like Ethereum and Solana jumped more than 10%. Overall, the $2 trillion-plus global crypto market posted a one-day increase in excess of 7%, according to CoinMarketCap. Crypto traders, like traders of other financial assets, welcomed the news Wednesday that Trump has backtracked on tariffs for most countries just days after announcing an aggressive agenda that upended global financial markets. Trump hasnt relented on levies on goods imported from China; in the same post on Truth Social, he said hes increasing tariffs on China to 125%. While the trade war with China is far from over, traders instead celebrated that Trump reduced reciprocal tariffs on other countries to 10% during the pause period after a brutal few days of whipsawed trading. Before announcing the pause, Trump posted on Truth Social urging Americans to be cool and that this is a great time to buy. The price of cryptocurrencies has provided an interesting read on the pro-crypto Trump administration. While cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin rallied in the weeks following his November 2024 election victory, that enthusiasm had already dissipated by mid-January when Trump returned to the White House. Bitcoin bear market In March, Bitcoin entered a bear market, defined as a decline of at least 20% from a high. Even with Wednesdays gains, the price of the largest cryptocurrency by market cap is still down more than 22% from an all-time high of more than $109,000 just hours ahead of Trumps second inauguration in January. Since then, global crypto markets have lost nearly $900 billion in value. Meanwhile, the major U.S. stock indices have thus far not entered bear markets, though they were all in bear market territory in recent days. Trumps announcement Wednesday buoyed stock prices, as the S&P 500 jumped 9.5% and the Nasdaq 100 spiked 12%. Still, while some sense of euphoria has returned to financial markets, some crypto experts caution that it could be some time before these assets recover their losses as the newest traders are being hit hardest by losses. Ki Young Ju, the CEO of CryptoQuant, has predicted the Bitcoin bear market could last as long as six months, for example.
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E-Commerce
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