Generations are groups of people who share a significant year of birth, location, and related historical experiences in their growth phase. Until now, generations have been divided into five groups that will certainly increase in the future, including the Baby Boomers generation (1946-1064), X generation (1965-1980), Y generation or Millennials (1981-1995), Z generation (1996-2010), and the Alpha generation (2011-2025) (Fadlurrohim et al., 2019). Each generation certainly has its problems, it is possible that the current generation of children, the alpha generation, also has many issues.

The difficulty of the modern world is the main problem in the alpha generation, especially in the era of the Industrial Revolution 5.0, where technological developments are snowballing. This greatly facilitates daily work; therefore, we will become dependent on the use of advanced technology. Now, especially for the alpha generation, most of whom are still underage, who are familiar with technological developments during their growth and development, so they will be very familiar with technology. Without parental supervision, alpha-generation children are too early in using technology.

Generally, problems such as delinquency, bad behavior, content, or weird news have been accepted since age 18 and above, because we already understand and can compare what is good and bad. But now, it's all starting to be different because these problems have contaminated the alpha generation which is still under the age to know these things. This is proved by the many news of children in Indonesia who easily say rude words because of online games or something else. Children who underestimate education and do things that are not useful for their future, even children who have begun to deny what their parents say, not only in Indonesia, but in some cases abroad are no less concerning, and in fact, they are children who are still underage.

Due to the endless amount of content presented on social media, we are exposed to too much information. The problem is that even the previous generation still has difficulty limiting the need for social media, let alone the alpha generation, who are still underage, and generally cannot think for themselves because they do not know what is wrong and what is right. So, this is all referred to as "Brainrot" which is a slang term used to describe behaviors developed through excessive media consumption, especially among the alpha generation. The term has been popularized on social media platforms such as Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube to describe how children are brainwashed by the influence of the content they see on these platforms.

Here are some examples of the "Brainrot" phenomenon in the alpha generation:

• Weird vocabulary

Weird vocabulary trends in the alpha generation, such as sigma, skibidi toilet, mewing, gyatt, rizz, only in ohio, fanum tax, and others. The vocabulary is very familiar to the alpha generation, this stems from a YouTube channel called "DaFuq!?Boom!" which has reached tens of millions of subscribers and watched tens of millions of views, the content contains a toilet-shaped humanoid monster attack called "skibidi toilet" with humanoid soldiers with human bodies and usually with cameras and television heads until finally these words are used as vocabulary inserts in conversations on social media.

• iPad addict

One of the cases abroad is children who are given gadgets in the form of iPads by their parents so that their children are quiet and parents feel peaceful not being disturbed by their children doing their homework, but it makes the child addicted to playing their iPad, even to the point of spending parent’s money to buy an item in online games such as Roblox, Minecraft, The Sims, and others. This addiction will cause the child's emotional state to become more temperamental, even if the iPad is taken away by the parents, the child may get angry, cry, and even throw things around to return to playing with the iPad.

These examples show how content on social media can affect the behavior and habits of the alpha generation, as they often spend a lot of time on the internet at the expense of other more useful activities. The impact is that their concentration ability will decrease due to the overload of information they receive, they will find it difficult to do something that requires deep concentration, such as reading, doing schoolwork, and others.

There are many contents under the guise of children's content, even though the content contains things that smell of youth delinquency such as violence, negative things, and rude sentences. All these negative things are presented in one content on the internet with a fast phase, you can imagine how "brain damage" is in the minds of children who consume this content because they are too free in using technology and without parental supervision.  Therefore, we as parents must always pay attention and educate the children of the alpha generation to avoid receiving excessive information, instead of allowing children to use technology with the alibi "biar mereka anteng", we also must provide limits in using technology. Every generation has its strengths and weaknesses, but the problem of "information overload" is hazardous in the internet era, no matter what generation it is.

July 1^st, 2024

References

Sari, N., Aminah, A., Noventi, E., Holida, I., Julailah, J., Laudza, K. A., ... & Sari, Y. E. (2024). Edukasi Pola Asuh Ideal untuk Gen-Alpha. Journal Of Human And Education (JAHE), 4(3), 293-298.

Fadlurrohim, I., Husein, A., Yulia, L., Wibowo, H., & Raharjo, S. T. (2019). Memahami perkembangan anak generasi alfa di era industri 4.0. Focus: Jurnal Pekerjaan Sosial, 2(2), 178-186.