After a long day of hard work, you decide to try a new TikTok trend you’ve seen to help cope with the busy day.
Bed rotting is a term that’s been used throughout the internet recently. With the trend growing in popularity, people have become a lot more accustomed to the phrase.
The term originally showed up throughout TikTok between mid to late 2023. But recently at the start of 2024, it had become popularized again and promoted throughout the algorithm.
Bed rotting is the act of staying in bed for extended periods of time not to sleep, but to do passive activities, according to Health. These activities would include scrolling on social media, binging shows, binge eating, or just sitting in silence.
The problem with bed rotting is that a lot of people misunderstand the meaning of the phrase because of the trend on TikTok. My problem is when people only think it’s a trend and forget that there’s people who actually struggle with it as a result of depression or other mental disorders. 25% of US TikTok users, which is roughly 37,500,000 people, are 10 to 19 years of age, according to Exploding Topics. This can lead to a lot of children wanting to participate in this harmful trend.
TikTok has had a tendency to not only bring about harmful trends unaware of their backgrounds, but also to promote these habits and encourage other people to participate and engage in them. A lot of TikTok “trends” have been surrounded by mental health and people have been making it out to be trendy to have mental disorders. An estimated 3.2 percent of American children and adolescents have diagnosed depression, according to Yale Medicine.
The content on TikTok posted about bed rotting needs to be more controlled and posts about bedrotting should be to inform and spread awareness around people who struggle with mental health, rather than a trend.
Bed rotting is very unhealthy for an individual. It could start as self-care as a way to rest but then turn into fewer productive or enjoyable activities, more time on social media, more sleep issues, and more social isolation, leading to more depression, according to Ohio State University. Bed rotting is another trend coming from this generation that promotes unhealthy habits and behaviors.
Using bed rotting as the first solution to cope with something in life, however, can lead to social isolation which is a risk factor for depression and anxiety, according to Fox. The effects of bed rotting are far more detrimental than the chance of a temporary positive outcome of calm and a break from a busy life.
I think that bed rotting shouldn’t have ever been a trend. It promotes unhealthy behavior that can have a more negative affect on someone than some people may realize. People need to be aware of what they promote and encourage by doing research and looking into the effects of coping behaviors.
