Brain Rot: Is your phone destroying your attention span?
All In The Mind
ABC
4.4 • 785 Ratings
🗓️ 13 September 2025
⏱️ 30 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Everyone seems to have a hunch that their phone is destroying their attention span, but is there any science to back it up?
In episode one of Brain Rot, we’re doing our best to focus on the topic of attention for a full 25 minutes — and find out what's actually happening in your brain every time your phone buzzes or dings.
Is brain rot a real thing? Or just another moral panic?
And how do you know when your own screen use has gone too far?
This episode originally aired on Brain Rot, a series of the ABC podcast Science Friction. Sana will be back with all-new episodes of All in the Mind in mid-October.
Guests:
Anna Seirian
CEO, Internet People
Dr Mark Williams
Professor, Macquarie University; Cognitive neuroscientist
Michoel Moshel
Clinical Neuropsychologist Registrar; Phd Candidate, Macquarie University
Professor Marion Thain
Professor of Culture and Technology, University of Edinburgh; Director, Edinburgh Futures Institute
Credits:
- Presenter: Ange Lavoipierre
- Producer: Fiona Pepper
- Senior Producer: James Bullen
- Sound Engineer: Brendan O'Neill
More information:
You can catch up on more episodes of the All in the Mind podcast with journalist and presenter Sana Qadar, exploring the psychology of topics like stress, memory, communication and relationships on the ABC Listen app (Australia) or wherever you get your podcasts.
If you'd like to access the transcript for this episode, head to it's original webpage.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | ABC Listen, podcasts, radio, news, music and more. |
| 0:07.0 | What do you get when you mix a sheep, a scientist and a bold idea? |
| 0:11.5 | A clone called Dolly and a moment that changed science forever. |
| 0:15.3 | I'm Peter DeKryfe, Environment Reporter and host of ABC Radio National's new science friction series |
| 0:20.8 | Artificial Evolution. |
| 0:23.0 | Nearly three decades since Dolly, I went looking for the legacy of that sheep. |
| 0:27.1 | It left me feeling a little unsettled. |
| 0:30.6 | To hear what I've found, search for science friction and find it in the ABC Listen app. |
| 0:36.2 | Hey, it's Sana here. |
| 0:38.1 | I want to chat to you right up at the top of today's show, because today, on All in the Mind, |
| 0:43.1 | and for the next five weeks, we've got something a little bit different for you. |
| 0:47.3 | We're going to be sharing a series called BrainRot. |
| 0:49.8 | It's from another show on ABC Radio National called Science Friction, |
| 0:54.2 | and I think you're really going to love this series because it touches on a bunch of topics |
| 0:58.8 | that I know all in the mind listeners are super interested in. |
| 1:02.7 | BrainRot is about our relationship with technology, with smartphones, with the internet, |
| 1:07.4 | and what all of that is doing to our brains. |
| 1:13.4 | It covers how tech is affecting our memory, |
| 1:20.5 | our attention, our relationships, and what happens when you try and do away with your smartphone? |
| 1:26.5 | And we know from your listener feedback and from some of the episodes we've done in the past that you are really interested in |
| 1:28.8 | trying to figure out how to manage your relationship with tech. So in this series, you'll hear |
| 1:34.5 | from a woman who got into a months-long relationship with AI, the guy who data dumped his |
... |
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