2026-02-27
8 分钟brain rod and language learning.
Now brain rod is a term that I recently became aware of.
Someone mentioned it to me.
Apparently it's the word of the year in 2024, according to the Oxford Dictionary.
And it's related to the sort of frenetic exposure to short length videos on Instagram and TikTok and so forth.
And the way these are designed in such a way as to make particular young people addicted to them.
that they want to continue scrolling down
because the algorithm is suggesting more and more potentially stimulating interesting things that they want to look at.
And so young people are spending more and more of their time sort of addicted to these short videos.
which is contributing apparently to a high degree of loneliness that young people are spending less and less time connecting socially with their friends more and more time engaged in these activities on their smartphones.
So how does all of this relate to language learning?
Well, Of course, in a way, I am involved with social media.
I have a YouTube channel.
I talk about language learning and I use videos a lot for language learning.
In other words,
I find videos in different languages that I'm learning on YouTube and I import them into link as language learning content.
However, I have always preferred videos that are 10 minutes,
20 minutes long or even longer, depending on my level in the language.
Obviously, when I'm you know, at an earlier stage in the language I prefer to be,
you know, three to five minutes and later on I can go for 20, 30 minutes.