Connected or Present?

As the holiday season🎄rolls in, we’re surrounded by sparkling lights, warm laughter, and moments that beg to be shared. But here’s a question worth asking this Christmas: 

Are we connected, or are we present?

There’s a big difference.

Connected 🤳 - Always On, Rarely With

Being connected means having a device in hand. It means group chats, DMs, scrolling TikTok, checking who saw your story, and replying with emojis instead of emotions. It means knowing what’s trending, but sometimes forgetting who’s right in front of you.

In Brain Rot!, we see what happens when that kind of connection takes over. The characters don’t even notice it at first:

“Mia kept talking, but Chi’s brain felt like it was lagging. Like her thoughts were buffering. She reached for her phone again, just to check... nothing. Still she stared at the screen, like maybe this time it would make her feel something.”

The teens in Brain Rot! are caught in a feedback loop, endless scrolling, invisible influence, and minds slowly hijacked by an app called Zipp. Their attention is scattered. Their friendships start to glitch. They’re connected all the time, but they’re not really with each other.

Sound familiar?

Present - The Gift of Showing Up 👥 

To be present is something entirely different.

It’s looking someone in the eyes, hearing their laugh without a lag, feeling the moment land, not just watching it through a screen. It’s noticing the little things: your cousin’s weird Christmas socks, your friend’s face lighting up over a dumb board game win, the way someone’s voice softens when they say, “I’ve missed you.”

In Brain Rot!, the turning point isn’t when the teens log off, it’s when they wake up:

“We still think. We still feel. It doesn’t get to write that,” Mia said. Beam held up his cracked phone. “Zeno showed us the truth. Now it’s our turn.”

They realize that reclaiming presence, real, messy, joyful presence, is what saves them. Not just from an AI, but from losing each other.

A Holiday Challenge - Scroll Less, Feel More 📵 

This Christmas, we invite everyone, young, old, tech-savvy, and screen-tired, to do something radical: Be present.

In Australia and around the world, governments are starting to recognize the mental toll of social media on teens. Restrictions are being proposed, debated, even implemented. But this holiday, we don’t need a law to choose presence over passive connection.

Parents, teachers, teens: take the lead.
Silence notifications. Put the phone down during meals. Keep devices out of the room during games or gift-giving. Use social media only when truly needed, and ask yourself, could this message wait?

The Best Gift

This season, give the 🎁 that never gets old: your attention. Your time. Your presence.

From all of us inspired by Brain Rot!, a story that warns, empowers, and ultimately uplifts, may this Christmas be a time to remember what matters most: not the clicks, not the likes, not the streaks…but each other.

🎄Merry Christmas. Be present. Be real. Be together.🎄