If Social Media Shortened Attention, Will AI Rewire Our Brains Entirely?
How tolerance and empathy determine whether students adapt or spiral
I write about leadership and AI, with a focus on why critical thinking about technology matters more than ever.
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When I left my higher ed job a few years ago, I finally got on social media. I know, talk about being late to the party. For years I resisted it, but if I wanted to write publicly, I didn’t really have a choice. I started with LinkedIn and Medium, and eventually Substack. It was a huge adjustment. At first it felt awkward and draining, like my brain couldn’t handle one more new thing.
It was like learning an entirely different language with its own cultural norms and expectations. Just when I felt like I started figuring things out they would tweak the algorithm.
Even now, I sometimes feel like I’m behind. I’ll see classmates on Facebook with hundreds or even thousands of connections, while my own numbers look small next to theirs. There’s a lot of psychology wrapped up in that. Which is why being online can be so detrimental to mental health when people constantly fall into the comparison trap.
It’s easy to measure yourself against numbers without really knowing what’s underneath, whether it’s algorithms or the back-channeling happening behind the scenes. Once I understood more about how social media actually worked, I could give myself some grace and take a breath. That acceptance for discomfort opened the door to adaptability. And that mental agility is what gives you agency.
Digital self discovery
I have seen what happens when people hit their limit. Back in higher ed, even small efficiency shifts were too much for some of my coworkers. When we moved from carbon-copy forms to digital versions, some of them were so upset they complained to leadership and ostracized anyone who supported the change. In another office, we got dual monitors so advising could be smoother. A couple of people refused to use them for months. Wouldn’t even take them out of the box.
These weren’t complicated changes, but they carried a kind of mental weight that some people just couldn’t manage or process. That was before AI.
Now the cognitive load is higher, and the rewiring is happening in real time. Social media already trained our brains to crave novelty and outrage. ChatGPT takes that same loop to a whole other level.
It reminds me of walking into a casino.
I remember the first time I went to Las Vegas, wandering in and out of all the buildings. There’s a reason they pump fragrance through the vents, flood the rooms with flashing lights, and keep the noise level high. It creates that happy, feel-good buzz that makes people want to stay and spend more. ChatGPT has a similar effect. Every time you type in a prompt, it’s like pulling the lever on a slot machine. Sometimes you hit something witty, funny, or surprisingly deep, and you think, that’s it.
I’ve had plenty of those jackpot ah-ha moments myself.
That’s also why so many people struggled with the jump from GPT4 to 5. They had gotten used to how the previous version responded, the personality and conversational style. Then the upgrade came along, and it felt like pulling the lever and getting a string of wah-wahs. The instant payoff was gone, and people weren’t just disappointed. They were angry. That anger came from having that thrilling little rush taken away.
It showed how quickly we can get conditioned to expect those instant rewards, and how upset we become when they disappear.
If you’ve been a regular user of ChatGPT, Claude, or any of these tools, you know what I mean. Most of us can’t imagine going back to a time when they didn’t exist. I know I can’t. And for me, it’s not because it makes me think less. It actually makes me think more. I’m constantly coming up with ideas, troubleshooting, and solving problems — fixing my computer, diagnosing my refrigerator, even dealing with first aid on bee stings.
It hasn’t reduced my mental labor. In fact, I feel it’s increased it in some ways. The decision fatigue feels heavier because now it’s all the big stuff.
For the first time, I understand how my coworkers must have felt when I kept suggesting endless changes to antiquated workflows.
Fluidity and tech
The danger isn’t that ChatGPT makes us lazy. It’s that it makes frictionless thinking feel normal. Once the brain transitions to easy dopamine hits from endless regenerations, even small amounts of effort start to feel overwhelming. Reading a dense article, wrestling with an idea, or sitting in boredom become impossible.
The very tool that can spark new neural connections also primes us to skim and scroll instead of digging deeper. For anyone who writes more thought-provoking material online, it’s obvious that it rarely performs as well as content designed to hit emotions in a quicker, more superficial way.
So the question becomes:
How do we fight against it?
How do we keep mindless reprogramming from becoming the default?
One answer is intentional learning. Limit how many times you regenerate. Pause to fact-check instead of rushing to the next draft. Paraphrase in your own words before moving on. Use AI to reduce load at the setup stage, like brainstorming and outlining, but make the thinking and synthesis your job. Without those small guardrails, the rewiring risk is real. What social media did to attention spans, ChatGPT could do to our endurance for thought itself.
This problem doesn’t exist in a vacuum. Politically and socially, the U.S. is modeling intolerance everywhere. Rolling back diversity measures affects people of color, women, and anyone who doesn’t fit the narrow mold of power. It also shrinks our capacity for flexibility and kindness as a society. Instead of building patience and stamina, we are actively eroding it.
What makes us durable
Other countries have taken a different approach. Finland’s KiVa program and Denmark’s long-standing empathy curriculum both show what happens when you teach kids to care about one another directly in schools. Bullying goes down. Social trust goes up. These are also countries that consistently rank among the happiest in the world.
Compassion is not a soft skill. It is a structural way to reduce conflict and make people more capable of handling the demands that life inevitably brings.
AI only adds to the strain. It is one more stressor layered on top of systems already under pressure. Without open-mindedness and human connection, people experience it as a threat instead of a tool. Rigid institutions plus low tolerance for understanding other perspectives equals backlash and stagnation.
That’s why agency matters so much. Empathy and patience create a sense of autonomy. Without them, people feel powerless, like change is being done to them. That was me when I first stepped into social media. I was awkward, uncomfortable, and unsure how to handle it. Over time, I built resilience for that discomfort and figured out how to take ownership of the way I use those platforms. The same principle applies to AI.
Critical thinking, tolerance, and empathy together are not luxuries. They are survival skills. Without them, we will be stuck in cycles of outrage, novelty-chasing, and resistance. With them, we can adapt, take control, and shape the changes ahead instead of being flattened by it all.
If we expect students to handle an AI-saturated world, we need to give them these skills now so they approach it with confidence and direction instead of confusion and fear.
The slot machine comparison is perfect, I've caught myself regenerating prompts just for that little hit of "maybe this one will be better."
Your point about frictionless thinking becoming normal, I've seen this in my own kids.
When they hit any cognitive resistance, they immediately reach for AI to smooth it over.
The tool that could help them think deeper is training them to avoid thinking altogether. Your suggestion about using AI for setup but keeping synthesis human feels like the right boundary, but it takes real discipline to hold that line.
I am with you on each of these points particularly how AI makes frictionless thinking so accessible that doing otherwise is an effort. And if there is one thing that we are becoming less of is effortful. It is vital to engage with AI so we are continually thinking and doing more and as you rightly said it has to be an intentional choice.
Great piece Bette