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Cele|bitchy | Pope Francis: Stop endlessly scrolling social media, it’s giving you ‘brain rot’

Pope Francis: Stop endlessly scrolling social media, it’s giving you ‘brain rot’

Pope Francis is a hater. It’s true. He might preach love, but that man has a hate-on for so many things: the LGBTQ community, men who gossip like women, priests who bless gay marriages, and people who love their pets as much as children, or people who raise animals and not children. Oddly enough, one of the few things Pope Francis doesn’t hate is a lady with a juicy ass, at least that was the scandal back in 2020, when the pope’s Instagram was caught “liking” a photo of a young lady with a bubble-butt. Speaking of Pope Francis’s social media usage, he apparently thinks hornscrolling and doomscrolling are bad things. He’s encouraging people to get off of social media because it’s causing too much putrefazione cerebrale (brain rot).

The leader of the Roman Catholic Church calls on his followers to abstain from a lot. Pope Francis’ latest request: stop scrolling. The Vatican head, 88, told an audience at the Jubilee of the World of Communications in Rome at the weekend that too much social media should be avoided because it causes “brain rot”—or putrefazione cerebrale in the more elegant Italian.

“Let’s put respect for the highest and noblest part of our humanity back in the center of our hearts, let’s avoid filling it with what rots and makes it rot,” he told an audience of thousands of writers and journalists. “The choices of each of us count, for example, in expelling that ‘brain rot’ caused by the addiction to continuous scrolling on social media, defined by the Oxford Dictionary as the word of the year.”

The pontiff added that the “cure for this disease” is education, especially for young people to ensure they are equipped with media literacy and critical thinking beyond the pull of constantly refreshing feeds. Lent, for what it’s worth, starts in little more than five weeks.

[From The Daily Beast]

I bicker with Pope Francis about a lot of things, but I actually think he’s right on target about this one. Social media IS causing brain rot. There are like two whole generations who are barely literate and lack any media literacy and critical thinking skills, and they just sit on TikTok and Instagram all day. I have no beef with the pope on this one. I’m curious if the pope has a finsta though – you know that ass photo was no mistake.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red.

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9 Responses to “Pope Francis: Stop endlessly scrolling social media, it’s giving you ‘brain rot’”

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  1. ShazBot says:

    This is the type of post that needs a like button!

  2. Flamingo says:

    I agree, I deleted my Tik Tok app because I thought it was over. Now I can’t reinstall it. And I am grateful for it. I would doom scroll for hours on end.

    I don’t need it, and it gives me hours back in my day. Plus, I don’t have to hear all the misinformation and disinformation. That a certain group wants to push.

    Go Pope!

    • Snuffles says:

      I deleted my TikTok too for the same reason and am not upset I can’t get it back. Especially after hearing about all the censorship. It’s not as hard as I thought. Same with Instagram.

      I’m on RedNote now, maybe that’s my methadone 🤪. I can scroll but the vibe is totally different. Just inspiration and helpful advice.

      But, I agree, it causes brain rot. I fear for the newer generations who don’t know life without it. I don’t have kids but my brother and his wife raised their sons without social media and severely limit screen time in general (they just like to play games).

  3. ariel says:

    Last month i lost my phone for about 4 hours, i knew it was in my house, but i could not find it (i had just opened the boxes of holiday decorations and there was a lot of stuff moved around).
    I felt like a junkie- i felt uneasy without it. Like the whole damn time.
    Kinda scared me.

    I have now put a screen time limit on my phone for social media apps, and one for games.
    Now, if Taylor is on the field after the game, i will ignore the screen time limit (also i allow myself insomnia time- which is likely counter-productive)

    Otherwise i have been sticking to my time limits.
    Not getting on at any random moment, and saving it up for a good evening wind down while watching a tv program my significant other enjoys more than i do.

    I’m an atheist- but i’m with the pope on this one.

  4. Lady Esther says:

    He likes big butts and he cannot lie!

    I have to say this is probably the only thing on which Sir Pope-A-Lot and I agree. My phone goes in a drawer the minute I get home, and stays there until I check it morning and night for my elderly mother. I am far too old to see it as anything but a phone and I do not get the constant scrolling behaviour…there is nothing that interesting to see IMO

  5. Eurydice says:

    I love “putrefazione cerebrale” – the Italians have such style.

  6. SarahMcK says:

    I’ve been doing some work on reducing scrolling. I removed all the social media apps from my Home Screen. I check Instagram and Facebook once/day to see if I have any messages. I’ve stopped scrolling altogether. And I think it is helping me feel more peaceful and less overwhelmed.

  7. Henny Penny says:

    This man who deems women less important than a single-cell organism that can’t sustain life on its own doesn’t have the qualifications to give moral advice to anyone, but he’s not wrong about social media. It really is of the devil. And if people really realized that Zuckerberg sold the American people out to its enemies, and that Meta’s AI is right now literally looking through your camera and watching everything you do, including how many times you watched Luigi’s perp walk, maybe they’d take it all more seriously. If you are using any free social media app, YOU ARE THE PRODUCT.

    After tiktok returned with Mark Zuckerberg’s stench all over it, I deleted all my social media accounts and even bought a new phone that didn’t come with any of these apps pre-installed.

    I realize this isn’t something businesses can easily do, but unless we, the public, stop allowing them to exploit us this march towards the police surveillance State will continue unabated and we’ll have nobody to blame but our own stupid selves.