How ‘Brain Rot’ and the Escapist Virtual World Is Harming Our Youth | Adnan Alkhalili

The generic Gen Z experiences you wake up, probably in a dark room, you reach for your phone.

And you just start scrolling or texting your friends and communicating.

You don't leave your room.

You don't go outside and take walks.

It's bad.

For many young people, this is not an exception.

It's the norm.

Today I sit down with Adnan Akalili, a 20-year-old founder and CEO of Touchgrass Collective.

A national student-led movement focused on tackling Gen Z's growing health challenges.

I would go to sleep late on my phone or on games.

I would eat really unhealthy.

All of these things cause my metabolic health to completely drain.

Ultimately it led me to have a panic attack and anxiety in all of these things.

Akalili is pushing for a return to something simple,

reconnecting with the real world, sunlight, movement, connection, nourishment.

What he calls touchgrass.

It is actually probably one of the most famous Gen Z phrases, which is touchgrass.

Because there's only one phrase related to health.

Why don't we use that to be the way we get people offline?

But he's not arguing we should abandon technology altogether.

Instead, he's asking, what if we could redesign it?

With technology, we're able to see it into technology, healthy rituals, and healthy habits.

This is American Thought Leaders, and I'm Janie Kellek.

Adnan Akalili, such a pleasure to have you on American Thought Leaders.

Thank you for having me.

So a lot of people, I think, that are watching this show,

including me, do not fully grasp,

because we didn't grow up in the virtual world.

We grew up in a physical world that's sort of transitioned over time

into a somewhat virtual world.

A lot of us don't really understand what's it like as a Gen Z,

or newer, to be growing up.

So tell me about that.

I'd like to start off with a comparison.

I think what most people are used to is the first things when you were first born.

You have interactions with a lot of people in your year.

So you have interactions with your family.

You have interactions with some people that come over to your house.

The baby's exposed to so many different things and learned so many words.

For someone like me, when I grew up, and especially Jennifer now growing up,

what they first see is they learn all of the words that they know

in their vocabulary from just an iPad.

They learn everything they know from a device.

They learn everything that all of the communication skills that they have

come from the virtual world, right, from online context.

So instead of learning a parent teaching you to a child,

a parent teaching their son or daughter some kind of new context in language,

they're learning that from the virtual world,

because language is forming on the virtual world.

Is it really that extreme, though?

I mean, you're in a family and you're communicating with people and so forth.

It sounds a little bit more extreme than that.

Because unfortunately, the reality is a lot of people,

although they're used to obviously communicating with their parents,

they hear some form of language from their parents.

They are consuming most of their content now from YouTube videos, right?

Parents often now give their children just YouTube videos to watch.

So like, for example, Coco Mellon, right?

I'm sure you've heard of that.

These are like these online songs.

I mean, in the past, they had TV shows, right?

They had like, you know, this is even recent.

We had SpongeBob, right?

Now, nobody really watches SpongeBob even.

They watch just basically online influencers speaking directly to the child.

And so this is when they're a baby.

As they grow up, though, I mean, they're going to school, right?

They're spending time with their teachers,

but their content is coming from a smart board, right?

And then they're having a phone at a really early age

and even the schools that like avoid phones,

they can still give like iPads and Chromebooks, right?

So now the kids are communicating on iPads and Chromebooks.

And so now they're having all of their communication on the virtual world.

And so in contrast to somebody that never had that,

all of their communication skills and now their relationship skills

are transforming and being created online.

So versus, you know, when a person might be growing up

and they might see, you know, they might make their friends in the community,

you know, sit on the sidewalk and play with the mud, right?

This is like the typical non-gen Z experience.

But nowadays, we don't really sit on the mud outside

because we stay mostly indoors.

And so the generic Gen Z experience is you wake up probably in a dark room,

you wake up in a very, very close environment, you reach for your phone.

And you just start scrolling or texting your friends and communicating.

You don't leave your room, right?

You don't go outside and take walks.

It's bad.

And part of this story is also that these things are addictive.

They've been designed to be addictive.

So, you know, that now your story is beginning to sound.

It's in me listening to you say all this.

It feels almost unbelievable.

But I kind of am believing you as we add the kind of addiction aspect here.

Yeah, no, so these are addicting things.

Obviously, we know that companies like Facebook and Meta

are obviously creating algorithms that are basically getting the young people

to continue scrolling, right?

They're made to appeal to the persons for you, right?

Like they're for you page.

And so obviously, it makes sense that these people would be online.

But the other thing is like beside the algorithms and the addition aspect,

the fact that these things are so readily available to young people

or why they're able to participate, right?

The entire, at this point, we've kind of reached past the stage

where it's like, yes, it's addicting to young people.

And now it's just so widely available to young people.

This is the new medium of how people communicate.

So, we're kind of past the addiction.

Because that's in the past.

People are already addicted.

Like that's already the case.

And we've reached so much addiction to the point where now

all of the conversation is happening online.

And this is for good and for bad, right?

You know, we obviously have people using X for good reasons.

But young people are using Discord,

which I'm not sure if you're even aware of.

Discord is like the most used platform for young people to communicate on,

especially in the gaming world, where people literally just have only friends

who've never met in real life.

Friends they've only met online.

And their entire community is online in these servers on Discord.

And it's the same thing.

I mean, that's just like audio communication while you,

everyone watches the same game being played or something.

That's basically what it is.

I mean, it's just people spending all day texting, random people.

But that Discord server is like just a way that a whole bunch of people can talk.

Yes, online.

It's like a WhatsApp group chat, right?

But just imagine a WhatsApp group chat that people spend all day on 24-7.

And instead of, you know, those people being people they know in real life,

these are people they've never met before.

In fact, they don't even know their names.

They don't know where they live.

And they basically just make a caricature of their best selves

and then put them on that platform.

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So you lived in this world but you somehow pulled yourself out

and you felt the need to do such as,

tell me what happened.

Yeah, so I grew up very natively online,

scarily so as well.

I grew up on the Discord world.

I grew up on the gaming world as well.

I played games all my life.

I grew up when I was young.

This is something I talk about often.

I remember just like in my youngest, youngest year

as maybe when I was eight years old, seven years old,

I would wake up, open my computer,

and I would play like an online platforms.

This is like the oldest stuff.

This is before like we even had like the current games.

Like there was a game it was called Phantage.

And it was like this online virtual world

where people would like talk to each other.

They would have like friends and families.

It was really weird stuff.

But like that was a very famous game of the time.

And I would just wake up play that all day.

And even the friends I had in real life,

we would end up not even spending time together.

We would spend all of our time online.

So they'd be in their house.

I'd be in my house.

We would call each other and we would just play.

And it got worse over the years

because I started to have entire relationships.

My parents never even knew about.

And I mean my parents were very good parents.

But they had no idea that I had like the access

to so much online that they never were aware of.

So even if they tried their best like,

you know, make sure that my real world was maintained.

The virtual world was not maintained.

They had no idea who I was talking to.

And there was always like the age old adage

like don't talk to strangers, right?

So don't give the address to random people.

Don't tell people where you live, et cetera, et cetera.

But even then like if you don't give people your address

and you're staying safe online,

you're still living completely online.

And I lived in that world where I was completely online

all the time.

However, I mean the thing is once you reach a stage

where you realize how sick you feel.

And this was again, we can talk about this

whenever you want.

But when I started to feel really, really sick and unhealthy,

I started to tear apart all of these layers.

And that eventually made me realize

that I don't want to be online anymore.

But what kind of sick are we talking about?

A lot of variations.

I think this is something that I'm happy I can describe.

But most young people I think are living in this

and they're not able to articulate it and describe it.

It's the feeling of you wake up and you're tired, right?

You wake up and you've had eight hours of sleep.

And yet you still feel sluggish the entire day.

Now the solution most people think is they take energy drinks.

I know all of my friends and everybody that I work with

and anybody I talk to, they're like,

energy drinks are the way to go.

Even though they're always tired after taking the energy drinks.

And so you had a full night of sleep.

Why are you still tired?

And then after that, obviously gaining weight,

feeling sluggish all of the time.

Not really wanting to play sports anymore.

Not wanting to go outside.

And the worst symptom is you don't even want to participate

in anything healthy.

Because you're just so used to being sluggish and tired.

And that's the feelings I had.

And this is before I actually experienced mental health issues,

which was the tipping point for me.

And this is of course all within the context of staying

in this virtual world.

So just before we, I want to get more details about what happened to you.

But what percentage of people do you think actually live like this way?

Because again, it sounds like a kind of extreme life, right?

I don't think I've ever met a young person in my life

who has not been integrated into this world.

When I say young, I mean, people that I've grown up with in Gen Z

in general.

I would say that, I mean, I can't give you an exact statistic on this

because again, even if we, like, I don't even think that you can create

an authentic statistic on this kind of thing.

But I would say in my experience, where I work with hundreds of young people, right?

Like our organization, we work with hundreds of hundreds of hundreds of young people

on college campuses and in, you know, younger years.

And I don't think I've ever met a single person who has an experience

this where they know what this virtual world is like.

A really good story of this is I was in a policy room.

And they were discussing getting phones out of schools, right?

They were discussing getting phones out of schools.

And I was the only person in the room that was Gen Z.

I was the youngest person in the room.

Everybody else was like maybe 40 or 50 years old and older.

And they were discussing like, okay, we need to get the phones out of schools.

One person said it was a national security issue, which I was very happy about.

But for the most part, it was like, you know, phones are like tobacco.

That was the main thing that they said.

And I was really, really upset about this because I realized not a single person in the room

even understood how it actually looks like.

It's not that phones are like tobacco or the virtual world is like tobacco

because tobacco was something that was just dictating and cool, right?

No, this is an entire world.

Like this is literally an entire planet that people live on.

And it's, I know you're saying it, like it sounds extreme.

And this is the problem that if you literally talk to any Gen Z

and have them explain it to somebody that's not Gen Z,

the person who's not Gen Z maybe a later millennial and older

will actually have no idea what they're talking about.

Like it sounds like another language.

And for us, it's very hard because while we're trying to create solutions

we have to talk to people that never lived in that world

and they actually don't recognize how scarily important it is that we do look at it

because this is real.

And it sounds to you like maybe that's like some kids, some kids are online all the time.

No, even the most like wellness-based kids are still online, right?

Like look at the best influencers that we know who are young, right?

That are talking about health and you know all of these like health initiatives.

They're still plugged in 24-7, right?

And I know like the best people that are working on stuff like I'm working on,

I can still go on social media and find them anytime I want, right?

And so this is something that...

It's just like a massive sea change in how society is constructed.

I mean, this is what you're talking about here.

It's a different society than anyone's ever experienced.

And this is completely different, I would say, from hundreds of thousands of years

of how humans lived.

Okay, before we go further, you know, you had a kind of a transformation.

You had an aha moment.

Explain to me what happened.

Yeah, so I was entering high school.

And for most young people going into high school, it's a very scary time, right?

You know, you're meeting new people, meeting new friends.

And for me, I was very happy.

I was like excited, I was running forward.

And although I was always online, I was still excited for high school.

And this was also near the beginning of COVID as well.

So it was a time where we were getting even more virtual.

And, you know, I was just sitting around and suddenly I had an anxiety attack.

Now anxiety attacks is...

This is not a unique experience for me.

It's not like I had something that nobody else had.

It's just at the time I was very insulated.

So I thought I was the only one having it.

And having an anxiety attack where you feel like, you know, nothing physically is wrong with you, right?

I went to the doctor in the hospital and they were like, completely fine.

But my entire world was broken.

I literally felt like I couldn't breathe every single day of the week.

And I was 14 years old, you know.

As a 14-year-old feeling like you can't even breathe every single day.

Like I was constantly aware of my breath.

You know when someone like tells you like, think of your breath.

Then you start thinking of your breath and you're like thinking of it.

And now you have to control your own breath. Have you ever thought of that?

I don't think I have.

But if you had to think of your own breath, right?

I mean, I've done this.

You realize that you can control it, right?

Right.

Now imagine you think that every single hour of the day,

since you wake up till you sleep, it's terrifying.

Right.

You have to control your own breathing because, you know,

you've turned off your body's involuntary ability to do that.

Just by being conscious of it 24-7.

And so this was my experience where that was my,

how I basically experienced anxiety.

And I had OCD as well, which is another experience.

But I'm happy I had these experiences because I'm not the only one.

Like if I go into a high school, I can guarantee you that majority of the kids

are experiencing some form of this.

And the mental health epidemic in our country is just, it's absolutely-

Where did this come from?

Like what would you do?

Do you have a sense of that now?

And-

100%.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, I mean, my entire, and again, I'm a big fan of the fact that

metabolic health is one of the core drivers of mental illness.

And if you think about my metabolic health, it was destroyed, right?

What was I doing?

When it comes to my circadian rhythm, I was waking up in a dark room.

I was not even wanting to-

I had a very big light sensitivity.

Like I didn't want lights open all the time because I was just not-

I mean, the more unhealthy you are, the more you have a light sensitivity

and you don't even want to see light because it just, you know, it triggers your body.

And so I didn't want light.

So I would wake up in a dark room.

I would go to sleep late on my phone or on games.

I would eat really unhealthy.

All of these things caused my metabolic health to completely drain.

And so, of course, my brain function was terrible.

Ultimately, it led me to have a panic attack and anxiety in all of these things.

And, I mean, also, I mean, just the fact of having negative health outcomes,

I mean, having so many bad circumstances when it comes to my health,

I was also extremely stressed all the time.

My cortisol was 100% up.

And I was always stressed.

So even though, again, I felt very happy, right?

I'm not saying that I had anxiety because I was experiencing like mental trauma in my life.

I was very happy.

But even then, beneath the emotional surface,

there were so many physical things happening.

And all of those drained my metabolic health,

which ultimately drained my mental health.

And it was just these kind of things that when I realized that like-

And for me, I didn't enter this from a scientific perspective.

I just lived the experience.

But then I luckily lost weight, right?

And that was something big for me, right?

I started a journey on losing weight.

This was unrelated to my mental health issues.

I just decided like, I don't want to be overweight anymore.

And so, I just started to lose as much weight as I could,

mostly through a keto diet, which I know you're familiar with.

And this was like, by chance, this wasn't like-

I wasn't familiar with like the science behind it.

I kind of just fell into a loop.

I think I'd seen like a Dr. Berg or Mark Heim in video.

And I was like, you know what might as well try it.

I tried the calorie stuff before.

You know, calorie restricting all that never worked for me.

So I just tried something.

And when I lost the weight, literally every single issue I ever had

when it comes to being drained all the time,

when it comes to my health issues,

when it came to any aspect of mental health issues,

they disappeared.

And this was maybe like a month's transformation, right?

Lost 60 pounds in one month.

Lost all my mental health issues.

60 pounds in a month.

In a month.

Maybe you must have been doing a little more than keto.

No, I was doing keto.

And now this is another thing, right?

I remember in my school,

my guidance counselor would come up to me and ask,

are you okay?

Which is funny because I was actually more than okay.

I wasn't okay before that.

But when I lost so much weight in such a small amount of time,

everybody was asking if I was okay.

And that's because it's not healthy to lose weight

in such a short amount of time.

But for me, it was.

And this is an experience I've seen with a lot of young people

and other people in general.

And a lot of people in the metabolic health world,

which is like, if you are living dysregulated

and you fix the things that are causing you to be dysregulated,

your body goes back into homeostasis.

And so my body's homeostasis was, you know, what it was.

And the funny thing is people were like,

oh, he just has a fast metabolism.

But everyone else my entire life was telling me

I had really bad metabolism until this point.

So ultimately fixing my metabolic health ended up fixing that.

And then it was from that same thing where I,

once I reached a point of feeling healthy,

is when I also started to look at my screen time.

Before that, I didn't care about my screen time.

Before that, I didn't even look at the virtual world as an issue.

But because I started to understand how it feels to be a human,

I also was able to then kind of feel the relationship between myself

and just staring at a phone all day.

And the problem is if you are a young person,

you're either really addicted to your phone

or you're eating really unhealthy food.

And if you fix one of those, you can get out of the other.

But if you don't fix one of them, you can't get out of the other.

You know, I was reading that, that, you know,

young people actually even aware of the fact

that they're not eating well.

But they somehow keep doing it.

Explain this to me.

Yeah, so young people are aware that they're not eating well.

And they're also aware that they're,

in colleges especially,

where they're aware that they're not eating well,

but they're also aware that when they do eat well,

they feel slightly better.

And yet they're still not eating well.

And this comes from a really, really difficult aspect

of the virtual world, right?

Or at least what I call the escapist reality, right?

Where they're constantly on devices

to escape from the real world, right?

They're living online anyways.

They grew up online anyways.

And they grew up in this escapist world

where anytime they wanted to feel,

not feel anything,

they could just eat something unhealthy

or they could go online, right?

And so if they're doing that 24-7,

why wouldn't they, you know,

just not want to be healthy, right?

Why wouldn't they?

Why would they care about how being healthy?

Because ultimately, yes, it feels good to, like,

all of the time, to be doing something like, you know, walking.

It feels good to, you know, run.

It feels good to eat something healthy.

And they know that.

But at the same time, it feels even better

when you're really, really sad or you're not feeling well

to quickly feel this big spike of dopamine,

which comes from going on their phone.

That feeling of being online

is just such a beautiful, ethereal feeling

that is completely unrelated to how you feel

if you're just sitting in your room,

twiddling your thumbs,

thinking of the actual thoughts that you might have.

Because it's a lot better to escape your thoughts.

I mean, what time in history have you been able

to just avoid anything that's hard and difficult

by just going online, right?

There is no, and this is like the biggest thing

when it comes to the escapeous reality.

When you are online or you're on this virtual world,

and it's not even just a virtual world, right?

I consider it like a third world, right?

Where it's, you're in your thoughts and you're kind of like

over here, right?

You're not necessary, like, like, for example,

when you're online, right?

You're texting someone, you're communicating with someone,

you're basically detached from your body, right?

You're not inside of your own body.

And so it's the same thing when you're online, right?

When you're online,

you're texting somebody, you're communicating with somebody,

you're in a community with somebody,

you're having conversations with them,

you're having jokes with them,

you're basically creating an entire identity with them

that is not your normal world, right?

So when I wake up, I go to school and I eat lunch

and I talk to my mom and I'm really annoyed

and stressed from my mom.

So I just, like, I go ahead and, you know,

I go to school and I almost fail to test at school.

All of these things are the real world, right?

This is the typical young person experience.

But then I go online and my friend from Connecticut,

who I've never even met in real life,

doesn't know anything about my real world.

And so I can just escape with them

and I can act like none of the real stuff matters.

I could do the same when it comes to my health.

Yeah, I don't feel great.

I feel disgusting.

But if I'm online and I'm talking to somebody else,

they don't know about how I'm feeling.

So I can just dissociate basically from my body.

It's like a really scary dissociation.

And I mean, I'm really kind of getting a sense

of what you're talking about here

because this is just a,

this reality being able to exist

in the kind of reality you're just describing.

Didn't exist until very recently.

So this is something we talk about a lot, right?

I kind of want to talk about this.

So think of what it really means to be a human, right?

Like this is a very, very scary thing.

But think about what it really means to be a human.

We had rituals for most of humanity.

Anytime you've heard of like ancestral living,

you see people talking about like the keto diet.

You hear someone talking about the carnivore diet.

I know you guys had Sean Baker.

Think about what it meant really to be an ancestral living, right?

To live like that.

It was these rituals.

The rituals were basically you'd wake up

because the sun came out.

So you would wake up.

Everybody would wake up every single day

because the sun came out.

Everybody would go to bed because the sun went down, right?

People would gather at night because, you know,

there's a community gatherings, right?

They had communal gatherings at a set time every single day.

All of these things that are rituals.

These are things that we just do

because that's just how we are as humans.

We don't have those rituals anymore.

I wake up and it's a dark room.

So I'm not really waking up from the sun anymore.

I wake up from an alarm.

I go to bed at night and it's not because I'm an alarm.

It's just because, I mean, I close my shades.

I can't even see the sun.

That's not why I'm going to sleep.

So all of these things, all of these rituals don't exist.

So I'm creating artificial rituals now.

And so what does it look like to be a human?

And you don't even have those rituals anymore.

You're basically not living like a human anymore.

You're living completely out of what humans have lived

for hundreds of thousands of years.

There's never been a time in history

for hundreds of thousands of years.

Ever.

We've had big conversation people have is like,

every time every century people are like,

oh, this is the scariest time to live, right?

No, this is literally the scariest time to live

because this is the first time we're not being human

and having rituals.

Like, these rituals are just the core basis

of what humans are.

You know, you're making me think of,

I don't know if how much Hannah are rent you have read,

but you're making me think of an atomized society,

which is the type of society that's right

for a totalitarian rule in fact.

And so you're disturbing me more than you think

by telling me what you're telling me.

Well, I think people are aware of that.

And I think that obviously those

in control of the algorithms are aware of that.

And I think that it's being done in purpose as well.

I mean, you can control society a lot better that way.

I know you talk a lot about China, right?

For example, think about, you know, bite dance

before, you know, they recently bought it in America.

And something that is really curious

is what they actually have in China

when it comes to algorithms.

What do they give the people in China?

Do they give them what we have today,

which is like brain rot, people scrolling

and seeing like AI videos of like cats talking in America

versus in China where they scroll

and they see like an airplane taking off

or they see like a physics problem.

It's very scary.

It's very different and very deliberate, absolutely.

So you lost a weight, you got clear,

you decided that the real world,

there's something there after all.

And you somehow got motivated to try to pull other people out.

So this is, so this is your,

do you remember the Matrix film?

You see, I mean, see, this is my generation.

Okay, I don't know if everyone,

this generation is watching the Matrix.

But this is making me think of the Matrix.

You're wanting to unplug people, right?

From the Matrix here.

Well, the scary thing is people,

like the Matrix as a movie has been out for a while now

and it's been used as a metaphor all the time.

I mean, they use Neo and the Matrix

for literally any issue going on where they're like,

this is the Matrix, right?

Like for example, most famous one,

Andrew Tate is making a bunch of young people

talk about the Matrix, right?

Where it's like, you know,

the billionaires are like forcing us to live

in like a fraction society.

That's the Matrix.

The reality is that's not the Matrix.

The Matrix we're actually living in

is that we are living basically

what they were living in the Matrix,

where they were plugged in.

They were plugged in to alternate lives

that were not even the real lives

that the people that were plugged in were living.

How are we different than that?

Aren't we also, maybe not you,

but most young people,

aren't they also living the experience

of being plugged in to this virtual world

with fake friends that they've never met?

People that they think are real,

but maybe aren't even real.

All of these different things

and they're just meeting these people online.

Isn't that the same thing as the Matrix?

So I think ultimately we've actually reached

the actual Matrix,

where we're all living on our devices

with communities that we've never met.

And we think that that's the real world,

and a lot of us,

and the scary thing is,

like you're saying,

yes, I figured that out,

and I talk about it,

but most young people don't even care.

They know that that's an issue.

They don't really care.

And so it is something that,

because I'm so familiar with DC,

and I've been in like a lot of these rooms

with a lot of important people,

I've realized that there's literally

no other young people in these rooms

talking about this,

and it scares me a lot.

And it's something that, like my co-founder Sam,

and I talk about,

because we have the same relationships in DC,

and we talk to the people making the change,

and we realize that even the people,

I mean, even in like right now,

in Secretary Kennedy's cabinet,

you know, for example,

when it comes to screen time,

we just really think that nobody's

really doing anything about this,

and it's terrifying.

And so how can we be in these rooms,

and see so many people doing things,

but no one's doing anything for this,

and how can we just sit there and be like,

well, I mean,

someone will figure it out.

Who's going to figure it out?

Right? That's the scary thing.

Just, I want to touch on that more,

what you just said,

but before we go there,

I'm still thinking of another film,

as you've been talking,

and that's a Ready Player One Steven Spielberg

is going to want one more recent films of his.

And, I mean,

it's kind of exactly the world you're describing,

except that there's one specific world

that all those people are a part of.

And their solution at the end of the film

is to take a day off,

if I remember the film well, right?

But it's actually great in there.

Just take a day off,

and that'll do it.

Yeah. I mean, there's also another movie,

I think it was called Her, The AI Movie.

I haven't seen that one.

Yeah.

I mean, both of these movies,

touch on a point where it's like,

I think,

and these are like,

kind of like sci-fi movies,

not sci-fi,

but I mean, like, you know,

futuristic movies of what could end up happening,

and it's like,

we live in that world already.

Like, we are,

we do need to take a day to plug off.

We certainly haven't yet.

And we'll talk about it,

but we figure it out.

I think we've created the way to do that.

I think we've created the way to get people

to plug out for a day.

But it's just scary that so many movies

have kind of hit the nail on this,

and at the time,

I remember watching these movies

and thinking like,

oh, this is like stupid,

and it's never going to happen.

Except you were in it.

Except I was in it at the same time,

already experiencing that.

And so it's like,

I never attached myself to the fact that

we are literally living in that world.

And it's even scarier

because the film about AI,

I think it was called Her or She or something like that,

which is literally like,

you know, someone talking to an AI woman 24-7

and like their entire relationship

with this AI woman.

Now, AI is an even additional thing to this, right?

AI is even scarier.

It also came when I was in high school for us,

so like, I saw how young people

were interacting with it,

and I see how people interact with it today.

Now we have a relationship

with the thing that's not even a real person.

So when it comes to not even being human anymore,

I think it was better

when we had virtual worlds

with only people.

Now we have virtual worlds with non-people,

and it's getting worse.

The movies are becoming real.

So, okay, so,

how does touching grass fit into all this?

So, you know, funny thing about touch grass

is that when I talk people in politics,

or like DC, right,

and I tell them touch grass,

they think that we're like some,

like, we're some like niche organization,

and they're like,

oh, you guys are just like,

you have funny name,

it's related to grass.

It's some niche idea, right?

And the crazy thing is it's not niche at all.

It is actually probably one of the most

famous Gen Z phrases,

which is touch grass.

Because everybody living in the virtual world,

when it comes to health,

they never talk about health.

Ever.

It's not something that's communicated.

They don't talk about health,

because ultimately,

if you bring up something related to real life

on the virtual world,

you're going to get crushed,

because they don't want to talk about the real world.

But the one phrase that is used,

out of any phrase,

when it comes to health,

it's only one phrase,

and it's touch grass.

Because that's basically people telling each other online.

You've literally been online all day,

and it's usually an insult,

but it's like,

you've been online all day,

go touch the earth, right?

Go touch grass.

And so it's become like,

the only phrase related to health online.

And so ultimately,

we were realizing that,

and we said,

I mean, there's only one phrase related to health.

Why don't we use it?

Why don't we use that to be the way we get people offline?

Because if everybody's already aware,

maybe they're not aware to the extent

that we talk about right now, right?

But the fact that young people

are telling each other every single day,

go touch grass,

doesn't that inherently mean that

somewhere within their mind,

they know that they're literally not touching the earth anymore?

And so ultimately,

we're trying to use that now

as a way to culturally create a solution to this problem.

So, but except that you're using, like,

leaf piles?

Well, that's an example.

Yeah.

So what basically we've come up with

is a framework called the touch grass moment.

And ultimately, we're trying,

like we talked about rituals, right?

We're trying to recreate human ritual.

So instead of getting people to just,

you know, telling everybody on the podcast,

go wake up at the sunlight,

and go to sleep at the sunlight.

Young people don't care.

They're not going to talk about health.

They're not going to talk about physiology either.

I mean, there's some people that will

I'll talk about it.

But when I'm really talking about, you know,

statistical anomalies, right?

So for the most part,

people will not talk about health

in order to get them to go do healthy things.

But they will talk about the really silly,

genzy trends.

And so if you tell them,

come to this specific place,

let's do something really silly and stupid,

because nobody likes serious things.

Let's do something really silly and stupid.

Ultimately, you're resulting

in them doing a touch grass moment,

which is them coming out into the real world,

and they're doing one of four things.

They're getting in the light, right?

So they're regulating their circadian rhythm.

They're moving, right?

So which is great and important for their health,

and a normal thing of being a human, right?

Because nowadays, everybody's just staying sedentary

all day, which has never existed before.

No humans have just stayed inside all day,

which is even scary if you think about it.

But we're getting the moving, right?

We're getting them connecting.

That's another aspect.

So there's this three.

Right? They're connecting with each other,

speaking to other human beings.

And the fourth thing is we're nourishing them.

So we're also including nutrition,

like intermittent fasting, things like that.

And so all four of those things are used

to create what we call a touch grass moment.

And one of those things, like recently,

like you mentioned, you know,

we had an event where a bunch of kids came

and just jumped in a pile of leaves, right?

And ultimately, we also, I mean,

literally, like two days ago,

our Penn State University chapter

just had a snowball fight.

And then they dug a big hole

and they touched grass in the snow.

But I mean, that was a group of students

that otherwise would have been inside, you know,

with the heat on and not outside.

And not outside, right?

And our students have found ways to get outside,

even though it's freezing outside,

there's no reason to go outside.

Instead, it would be better for them to just stay inside

in the escapist reality, right?

But now we're actually having people go outside again, right?

Hanging out with each other.

And the only way we're able to do this

is not by, like, just putting up a poster saying,

come do this funny thing.

It's the fact that we're using the same mediums

that they know how to use.

So we're using social media, right?

All of our university chapters have pages

that they create videos on.

They basically use the online virtual world

as a way to recruit people back into the real world.

And so they're using, you know, they're using Discord.

They're using Instagram.

They're using social media in every way.

And they're basically using the same broading forms

and they're getting people to go outside

and do healthy things.

And this is the kind of thing that if we scale this, right?

If we make this something really big, institutionally,

that is the way we can get everybody to plug off.

You know, I can't help but think you decided, you know,

that you're actually going to go, you're studying

metabolic health, right?

Right now.

So you're kind of applying,

you're studying what you're applying

as part of this whole touch grass thing.

It came from that.

It came from that.

Right.

When I was experiencing all of the health issues

that I experienced, I had no motivation whatsoever

to really do anything.

There was no motivation for a career.

I mean, my parents wanted me to do a bunch of things

and like every parent does.

But I had no motivation to do anything.

I remember I used to feel like,

like I felt like when I was in my senior year of high school

or my junior year of high school,

I felt like my life was over.

Like I genuinely felt like I was so tired of life

that I felt like I was in my 70s or 80s

and I had no motivation to continue.

I was like, I felt like I was done.

I was like, I lived a long life.

What else is there to do, right?

And when I solved my health issues,

I had so much motivation and goals

that I had so much interest in metabolic health.

Metabolic health is right now.

I think getting there,

I think people are starting to talk about it,

especially with the current administration, right?

They're talking about metabolic health.

But I don't think we realize how significant it is, right?

Like how can you not consider the fact that

if your cells are dead,

you're going to be dead, right?

Like literally the energy of your cell,

how is that not the most important thing?

Like I can't imagine studying anything else.

I think that's, right now,

I think every doctor should be studying metabolic health.

I think that should be the main thing

you study in medical school,

which is how do you keep people's cells alive?

And I think if young people

get their metabolic health good as well,

I mean, they're going to be perfect.

And that's why touch grass are for the four components

I told you about light, you know,

movement and nourishment and connection.

Those are literally just the drivers of metabolic health.

And we just basically took the word metabolic health off of it.

And we put touch grass moment on top of it, right?

So basically make them do physiologically healthy things

for the metabolic health.

But don't use the word metabolic health whatsoever.

Don't use the word physiology.

And because ultimately,

they're going to fix their metabolic health.

And that's really what we want.

We're just going to keep it

this a secret for only the people

that are watching this show, right?

That's what you're saying.

If young people want to participate

in the science aspect they can,

but I think it's just so fun already as it is,

like we know how young people are,

and especially the people who touch grass together,

they love just the silly aspect of it.

And as they get into the silly aspect of it

and they just, they start to integrate

and they start to feel how it feels

to really be outside and do these things,

then they actually gain the interest of like,

okay, now I actually want to learn

why am I feeling these things?

Like what is the actual science behind it?

And we've had that experience.

Fascinating.

You know, so one of the things you talk about

you were on with Dr. Phil a little while ago

and this term brain rot

is something that featured pretty heavily in there.

And everything you've been describing

is this this brain rot that you're talking about?

Brain rot is, so there is the entire virtual world

and escapist reality.

I think brain rot is just one of the mediums of that.

And it is probably the worst one.

We've arrived at a point now where people

are scrolling on their phone

and looking at videos that have no meaning whatsoever.

And it's worse than anything I've talked about already.

It's just like layer on top of the fact

that people are sedentary, indoors,

and just online communities.

And now add the fact that they're consuming

things that have no meaning whatsoever.

That's what brain rot is.

And it's also deliberate.

I mean, Dr. Phil mentioned that as well.

That they literally fund entire companies

to just produce mass brain rot for people.

And scary.

I mean, even for touch grass, we use brain rot.

Like we employ brain rot into our own content

because we know that brain rot reaches people.

And I mean, if we can reach people,

we can get them to do healthy things.

So brain rot is the type of content.

And it's a state of being.

It's a lot of things.

Brain rot content is just content that rots your brain.

Like literally, like I mentioned earlier,

imagine like a video of like an AI cat just talking to you.

It's not funny.

I wouldn't find it funny.

You wouldn't find it funny.

But it just looks intriguing.

And it kind of, and then you scroll to the next one.

I don't know.

Do you watch the Dr. Phil mentioned?

Because I actually showed him a whole page of brain rot.

And he was so confused.

But like, ultimately, that's just,

that's how brain rot is.

It's like the most confusing thing ever.

It's like a bird that looks really weird.

And you say like it's intriguing?

Yes.

They find it really intriguing.

In fact, they laugh when they see it.

There's something called Italian brain rot,

which is even worse.

Like a shark wearing Nike's.

It's not funny.

But it's really funny to Gen Z.

And it's ultimately deteriorating.

Because now Gen Alpha, I mean,

Gen Z doesn't really see this as like a real thing.

We kind of just like mess around with it.

But Gen Alpha now, the younger kids

who are like five, six, seven years old, right?

These kids, they love brain rot.

This is like just normal for them.

It's not even a joke.

It's just, it's reality.

You're describing a transformation of, you know,

essentially how people think at a mass scale

without us fully realizing what has happened.

I think it's basically.

Yeah.

I think it's happening really, really quickly.

To the point where a lot of research institutions

are just used to doing research

the way they've always done, right?

Where it's like, you know,

you survey a thousand people

and then you see like what they're feeling.

And I think that's why we haven't caught up

to how scary this is.

And that's why like with touchgrass together,

like we haven't employed polls.

But we're really just talking to you

on people every single day.

We hear the latest things every single day.

And I think that's what everybody needs to do.

But it's hard to do.

I mean, the Trump admin recently

had like the Council on Fitness and Nutrition.

I don't know if you, with Catherine Grenido.

And they also had the, the Maha report come out.

And one of the, like the most important things

that they talked about in it there was screen time.

And establishing councils in each state

to reach young people.

And it's been months now and they haven't done that.

And I think it's because they don't know how to do that.

I don't think they realize how, how to reach young people.

How to actually get to young people.

And we've done that.

I mean, we did it actually.

We did it in like a matter of one or two months.

I'm just reaching so many young people

and learning every single day now.

What is the actual experience on the ground?

And this is something that, I mean, we can scale

really, really big to, to so many institutions

to literally communities to find out

what are young people thinking.

And that's because, you know,

the internet moves so quickly.

And things change every single day.

And just how bad this is getting is,

is just changing every single day.

Something that really scares me is,

I see all the research being done on nutrition

and also the education on nutrition.

But I ultimately think that no matter how much we do

when it comes to research,

when it comes to investigating what's happening,

I think that technology is going to get stronger anyways.

Because we don't have nutrition billionaires.

We have technology billionaires, right?

And trillionaires actually.

So we have trillions in technology

but we only have, you know, people investing in nutrition.

But they're not creating solutions and tools

to really get healthy people living.

There's no billionaires in the health world, right?

There's billionaires in the tech world.

So, you know, when it comes to the films you talked about,

I think that what it really looks like,

and I don't think this is far-fetched,

I think that in the next 20 years,

we're going to have people walking in the street, right?

They're going to have AI everywhere.

You're going to be able to talk to the street itself.

You're going to have technology almost everywhere.

I mean, we have the Metaverse, right?

Where Mark Zuckerberg really wanted that, really badly.

Where it's like you can literally interact

with the virtual world while you're in the real world.

Or Apple came out with Apple Vision,

where it's like you would just wear something

and like you see the world around you,

but you're interacting with it.

And I think that we're going to live in that reality very soon.

And I think it's scary because we're already suffering

from this device on our phones.

How is it going to be when we actually now integrate

the phones to everybody and you can't avoid it

because it's just there.

You walk in the street, you walk outside.

The only places that we can escape these phones from

are literally now infiltrated by technology.

And that's why touchgrass moments are so important

because we're not trying to get rid of technology.

In fact, we endorse technology use.

It's just how can we now make that AI bot

that's in the street make sure that I'm not just going

to stare at the AI bot.

I'm actually going to still spend time outside.

I'm going to sit down.

I'm going to touchgrass.

I'm going to live healthily.

It's something a really long-term goal of ours

is we want to basically create value points in technology.

For example, I've talked about this before.

Do you know Pokemon Go?

Yeah.

Yeah.

This is actually something I was thinking about

as you're describing the situation

where you're communicating with the street

and so forth because that's, you know,

you're looking for these.

I remember this from years ago.

You're looking for these tokens

that are associated with a physical place.

Yeah.

Right?

So I've asked a lot of young people this question

which is when is the last time that you remember

being outside and really enjoying it,

but you were still on your phone.

And it was Pokemon Go.

And Pokemon Go just did so well

where it was a time where there were so many people outside

and they were still using their devices,

but they were outside.

And there was so much community happening in the real world

and they were barely using their phones.

I mean, they were just using it for a map, right?

And that is ultimately the only solution we can ever have.

There's no other solution to this problem

because technology is not going away.

It's going to stay.

I mean, unless we have a nuclear follow

and now we have nothing anymore.

I imagine, you know, as this goes,

they're going to have more and more communities,

you know, kind of like perhaps the Amish

and these traditional living communities that we already have.

I expect a lot of people will not want to have the level

of integration and engagement with technology 24-7

that you're describing because they will realize,

they realize the damage of it, right?

Yeah.

I think the scary thing though with that idea

is that that's assuming that these technologies are not

also addicting and also pulling in people

at a faster pace than they can pull out, right?

So, you know, the Amish, I mean,

they never had it to begin with.

But now, if you take an average young person

who's addicted to their phone,

I mean, they're not going to go and live in an Amish community.

They're not going to live offline.

I mean, they're not even going to consider

going outside right now.

So, it's very hard to do that.

So, I think technology is just going to move really fast

and it's going to create even better algorithms.

Because, I mean, the algorithms today are advanced.

I mean, you talk about something

and automatically it appears on your phone, right?

So, now, imagine in 20 years from now,

if we're having AI outside,

how are we not going to have even scarier,

better science and psychology driven algorithms

that basically trump anything we've ever had?

And, again, that's why I really feel that

the only solution we can have is one

where technology is not basically being, like,

thrown out the window.

Because, again, I mean, maybe what you're saying is true

and it happens, but I don't think that's,

I think that's very optimistic.

I want that to be the case,

but I think that technology is staying.

So, how can we make sure that while technology is here,

people are still at least doing the bare minimum,

which is they're getting sunlight, right?

They're moving, they're communicating with people,

and they're eating nourishing foods.

And the only way to do that is if we can make a relationship

with technology where the technology, like Pokemon Go,

rewards us while we're doing healthy habits.

That's ultimately where we're going.

Yeah, that still is the technology kind of, you know,

guide being your master, isn't it?

Yeah, and I personally prefer technology being my master,

but I'm alive, and I have sunlight, and I can breathe.

Because, ultimately, I mean, I'm really, like,

the alternative to this, in my opinion,

is, you know, we continue being sluggish,

we continue being sleepy, we die really early,

and we don't really get to live our full lives.

Maybe in the next few hundred years,

we have a better solution.

But I think that, like, ultimately,

we can't get rid of technology.

I mean, it's just, this is something that's here to stay.

It's not going anywhere.

And I think it's easy for somebody that's not continuously online

to just think you could just get off of it,

and that's why I think a lot of, like I said, policy rooms,

they just say, like, let's get the phones out of schools.

And I just don't think it's going away.

I think even if we get the phones out of schools,

kids are not going to just, like, go off technology forever, though.

Because, ultimately, they can go with it.

It's going to come back somewhere in their life.

I mean, we're spending billions in technology.

And it's incredibly difficult to imagine.

I mean, this is something that I really appreciate

in our conversation.

It's very difficult to imagine what it's like to be

one of these digital natives from the beginning.

It's really, because, you know, for me,

I've seen the progression all the way

from the first PCs, right?

When I was very into them, right?

But it's a completely different world

if that's all you've ever seen.

Yeah.

It's just, I don't know.

I don't know if there's ever been something

as a esoteric in a way.

And, well, and disruptive.

I mean, this is, I guess, I guess the printing press.

That's true.

The Gutenberg press was, you know, suddenly.

I think it's like, imagine explaining an iPhone

to someone in the caveman times, right?

Like, you can't explain it.

It's the same thing.

Not that you guys are cavemen.

I'm just saying, I hope that.

I mean, it's like, you can't describe a technology.

Or, I mean, it's hard to understand.

I mean, even, this is a really scary thing with parents, right?

Where, like, the parents don't understand

what their kids are doing.

And it's complete.

Like, you can't think of the fact that you can live

virtually online that often.

And it's just sad.

I mean, that's so much of your life and your identity

and your thoughts and your preoccupations

are in that virtual world, really,

and not in the normal world.

That's, I think that's the part that's hard to conceive.

And I think, I mean, I think there's benefits as well though.

And the reason I say there's benefits

is because when it comes to like global communication, right?

I mean, a kid in America now can talk to a kid in Germany

and they can have something to connect on, right?

They have nothing.

Like, the politics doesn't really divide them as much anymore.

And maybe long term, that's better

because people can communicate, devoid of politics.

And maybe find better solutions to problems

we wouldn't have been able to do in the past.

But at the same time, when we're not even alive

to have that experience, I mean, I don't think that matters.

So you're giving me kind of two messages here.

One is that this is here to stay.

You know, we're stuck with it.

And frankly, you know, the highly manipulative environment

that we touched on a bit that it engenders, right?

With all these people buying for our attention,

which probably was part of the OCD you experienced and so forth.

So that's just all the reality.

On the other hand, you really think

that there's a way to mitigate this in a meaningful way.

And I'm not convinced you can do it outside of, you know,

just unplugging from the system entirely.

So like realistically, right?

What are the realistic solutions here?

Yeah, I mean, so this is, I mean, on a very small scale,

it's what we talked about, right?

Like jumping into leaves.

That's a small community-based thing.

When it comes to larger communities, right?

Instead of like, for example,

they're telling people not to take phones out of schools.

Right now, we're investing most of our time

into, you know, new legislation on this,

trying to just solve it by basically axing it out.

I think what we need to do is we need to start investing

in legislation and also just partnerships with technology

where we're able to see it into technology,

healthy rituals and healthy habits.

So this is, for example, what we're doing with touchgrass,

where it's like, we can work with the technology company

and with that technology company that's otherwise,

you know, they don't want their users,

their user base to end up dying, right?

They don't want either user base to be so sick

because otherwise who's going to use their devices

when it comes to 30, 40 years from now, right?

So what we ultimately need is we need that these people

are using the technology,

but we're able to create rituals online

that get them ultimately outside.

So like, I'll give an example of this.

Imagine on Instagram, right?

Something that people really enjoy are like badges, right?

If they get like a badge on Instagram that says like,

it's very meaningless, but it's just a badge, right?

If they get a badge because they went outside

and they did a real-world thing, right, a touchgrass moment,

ultimately, they're going to go outside

and at the end of the day, they're going to be healthy.

So instead of going into the schools,

taking out the phones, throwing them outside,

what we actually need to do is invest in initiatives

and projects that are getting people to use the technology,

but use it in a way that the technology itself

is also going outside.

So we need to push partnership.

And ultimately, that kind of partnership is required

because if the technology companies don't allow

a partnership like that to happen,

then we really have no solution.

But I think the technology companies are kind of driven

and incentivized to do that.

Hmm.

Why?

Again, like I said, I mean,

it's the same with like insurance companies, right?

Insurance companies don't want everybody to die.

Otherwise, who's going to pay their premiums, right?

And it's the same with technology companies.

Like right now, I think that we've reached a point

where they've been able to just basically get everybody out

doing the same thing 24-7, which is using their devices.

But we've reached a point where if we don't now create a way

for them to still go outside and still live like a human being,

they're going to just now have no user base.

They're not going to have anybody to scroll.

They're not going to have anybody to use.

And it's a lot better for technology companies to be part

of that solution instead of the technology company,

also then being like axed and yelled at by legislators

and having to limit social media in certain locations.

So they're kind of forced to by the environment.

But this is important on the side of the government as well,

where they're not really putting emphasis on ideas and solutions

that can get people to work with technology for the better.

They're really working on solutions

that are just anti-technology.

So I think instead of like what you're saying,

where it's like you're kind of hopeless

about the fact that if you're kind of hopeful

that people will just get off technology,

I think we need to be in the opposite,

where we need to actually now push more and more

for pro-technology initiatives that still get people

doing metabolically healthy things,

like touch-grasp moments.

Or both.

Yeah, or both.

But I mean ultimately,

we really need to focus on the fact that technology's

advancing really fast and it is the new thing.

It's the way people communicate,

it's the way everything operates in society.

And so we might as well really invest in initiatives and projects

and I don't think that people in policy rooms

really appreciate that Gen Z knows this best.

I think they're really focusing on just what usually works,

which is create laws that limit the thing

or create laws that moderate the thing.

And I think we should really focus on how can we use

the thing itself.

And that's why very technology-native things

like touch-grasp moments work.

To foster the positive outcomes

or the positive elements of the experience as well.

Okay.

We're heading into a brave new world one way or the other.

A final thought has to be finished up.

I think that this is very imminent.

I think if we don't solve this,

we really won't have much more time.

And this is why I think in 20-30 years,

if we reached the reality that we talked about where,

you know, AIs everywhere,

and people are walking in the street

and they're communicating with technology 24-7.

If we've reached that point and we've not created infrastructure today,

especially when it comes to higher government,

we've not created infrastructure

and we just focused on policies and legislation.

I think if we reach that point,

then we really have no other way of getting out of it.

But if we start today,

we can avoid the point maybe in 20-30 years.

We can already have been in that technology.

We can already have the infrastructure

so that when that comes,

we're prepared and we're part of it already.

We're part of the technology that's in the streets

that gets people to still do healthy habits.

Which is really, if I may,

I mean, maintain our humanity

as really you're talking about, right?

And we need to use technology to do that, though.

I mean, that has to be part of the technology.

And it's very doable.

I mean, it's possible.

We've seen it with hundreds of students.

Well, Adnan Al-Khalili,

such a pleasure to have had you on.

It was a pleasure to be here.

Thank you so much.

Thank you all for joining Adnan Al-Khalili

and me on this episode of American Thought Eaters.

I'm your host, Janie Kellek.

I'm your host, Janie Kellek.