Larry Ellison Wants GenZ's Brains
Christine Merser, July 10, 2025
Larry Ellison is buying TikTok. Or at least, that’s what it looks like. It’s not a done deal, as is everything with Trump until it’s actually no longer reversible.
But assuming it happens, let’s be clear. Larry isn’t just any billionaire. He’s one of Donald Trump’s biggest ka-ching ringers. I believe somewhere in the vicinity of $250 million during the last election. (It’s hard to say for sure; he was in the shadows.) I’m no longer willing to say that he contributed $250 million in some way, shape, or form to Trump’s reelection, because we can all agree now, amongst each other, that contributing to the reelection is really putting money in Trump’s pocket. Because his stint in the White House is nothing more than a direct pipeline into his personal finances. I don’t need to offer any more proof than his golf games sending millions of dollars into his family’s finances every single week. And I don’t have time, and you don’t have time, for me to continue listing the pipeline. It’s bigger than oil, for God’s sake.
But more importantly, this is Larry’s payback. A direct pipeline into Gen Z’s heads. And what’s inside their heads? Their brains. And what’s the most information going into their brains these days? TikTok. And what does TikTok do in their brains? It’s a filing cabinet for their point of view, not to be confused with a place where they mull over the information coming in and determine for themselves whether they believe it or not. It just becomes them. Just like Fox News became your parents. Twenty four hours a day of the same thing going in, and they stopped processing it; they just filed it as their own belief.
As I see the future, humans, including you and me, are self-determining less and less, and tribal-determining (my word) more and more. Based on the people, places, and influencers we follow, we determine our point of view, our certainty of facts, which quite often are totally not facts at all, but rather a point of view someone else wants us to believe.
Now you may think this is a new phenomenon, but as I am researching more and more of the history that I was so goddamn proud of my whole life, waving my flag up and down highways that I traveled, I’m seeing that it was really just one-act plays my country wanted me to believe.
The thing is, the reason it’s different this time is that while we were filled with propaganda from our country about our history and who was in charge and how honest we were and what kind of country we were, our brains were not atrophying the way they are now. We were still able to think and process, which is fading.
That’s the difference. That’s the difference between then and now. That’s the difference between us being freethinking and Stepford wives. Literally.
But have no fear. It’s not too late. And for me, I’m done.
I am determined to be like those movies we watch, sometimes, where no one really knows which humans have been taken over by those trying to control the huddled masses, not knowing they weren’t free, and which ones are trying to save the planet so that individual choice in a brain free of manipulation is still something that can be accomplished.
What will it take?
It will take true cultivation of what you read, who you listen to, and how you spend your time. It will take giving up social media. Can you? Can I?
It’s the kind of discipline I’ve never had in the 70 plus years I’ve been on the planet. But you know what? I actually think I can do it. You know why? I’ve never wanted anything more in my life.
So go ahead, sell to Larry. I used to spend a couple of hours a day on TikTok. One day, I walked away from it. I’m actually walking away from ice cream. I had one breakdown last week after the bill from hell was passed, but other than that, not so much. I walked away from cigarettes years ago. I haven’t walked away from Diet Coke, but now that I really am starting to see how much I need my brain for the work ahead of me, I can see I’m getting very close.
What it’s gonna take, my friends, is to walk away from social media. Social media is an addiction, and social media is doing to all of us exactly what I described TikTok doing to Gen Z. This is not my opinion. This is scientific fact (see below) that is coming to light as the studies are now coming in. Brains are changing. Our ability to process information is dying, and our ability to file someone else’s piece of information as our own is growing.
To that end, by the way, I’m going on vacation. I don’t think I’ve really gone on vacation in years.
I’ll be back in a week plus a few days. I’m really looking forward to it. I’m also really looking forward to the future. Each of us has individual decisions to make about who we’re going be in this new world.
I’m also grateful for this moment in time and that I get to be in it. Because we were really living in smoke and mirrors in a country built on a poker hand of cards right out of Texas Hold ’Em.
And by the way, this whole thing about not holding the Republicans accountable for what’s going on in Texas? It’s total bullshit. That is my thinking person’s summary.
Other than that, I have no opinion about what’s going on in Texas. Yet.
It’s an exciting time in America because what we have to realize is that it’s time to rebuild from what is truly ashes.
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My Ai, Celeste’s Research on the brain thing…
Recent neuroscience research confirms that heavy social media use is altering how our brains process information, leading to decreased attention spans, reduced critical thinking, and an increased tendency to absorb and repeat information rather than analyze it. A 2023 study published in Nature Communications found that digital media use, particularly rapid-scrolling platforms like TikTok and Instagram, activates reward circuits in the brain similar to those triggered by addictive substances, leading to habitual behavior that overrides deliberative thinking (Montag & Sindermann, 2023).
What’s changing most dramatically is our working memory—the part of the brain that allows us to hold and manipulate information over short periods. Studies from the University of California, Irvine, show that frequent switching between apps or tasks (as common on social media) causes “cognitive fragmentation”, making it more difficult for the brain to connect ideas, recognize nuance, or retain facts over time (Mark et al., 2022). Instead of evaluating information, our brains are increasingly “filing” it—saving it as a belief or opinion influenced by repetition and popularity, rather than verifying its accuracy.
Additionally, research from the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg School for Communication shows that repeated exposure to emotionally charged posts trains the brain to rely on emotional salience rather than logical reasoning when evaluating new information. This undermines our analytical faculties and reinforces confirmation bias, making it easier for misinformation and tribal narratives to take root (Guess et al., 2021).
Neuroscientist Maryanne Wolf, in her book Reader, Come Home (2018), warns that digital reading habits, especially scrolling and skimming, are replacing deep reading and reflective thought with what she calls “cognitive shallows.” She explains that “we are losing the ability to engage in critical analysis and empathy because our brains are adapting to a mode of reading that prizes speed, volume, and surface.”
The consequence is a shift from active interpretation to passive intake—what we might call the “filing cabinet” effect. We’re still taking in massive amounts of information, but without the neurological friction that helps us question, synthesize, or reject it. As a result, our brains are more manipulable, more dependent on external cues, and more susceptible to influence, particularly from visual and social authority signals.
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Bibliography: How Social Media Use is Changing the Brain
1. Montag, C., & Sindermann, C. (2023). Digital media, reward processing, and addiction pathways: A neuroscientific perspective on social media use. Nature Communications, 14, Article 1129.
• Highlights how social media activates the brain’s dopaminergic reward systems similarly to drugs and gambling, reinforcing habitual behavior over reflective thought.
2. Mark, G., Wang, Y., & Niiya, M. (2022). The Cost of Interrupted Work: More Speed and Stress. University of California, Irvine, Department of Informatics.
• Shows that constant interruptions (like those from social media) impair memory consolidation and lead to cognitive fragmentation, harming decision-making and attention.
3. Guess, A., Nagler, J., & Tucker, J. A. (2021). The Fragmented Belief System of American Voters and the Role of Social Media. Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania.
• Discusses how social media’s emotionally charged content promotes confirmation bias and inhibits critical thinking in information processing.
4. Wolf, M. (2018). Reader, Come Home: The Reading Brain in a Digital World. Harper.
• A foundational book exploring how digital reading rewires neural pathways, weakening our ability to engage in deep reading and critical analysis.
5. Carr, N. (2010). The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains. W. W. Norton & Company.
• Early but still relevant work on how digital media reduces our ability to focus, contemplate, and retain information.
6. Ophir, E., Nass, C., & Wagner, A. D. (2009). Cognitive control in media multitaskers. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 106(37), 15583–15587.
• Shows that frequent multitaskers (including heavy social media users) are more easily distracted and perform worse on tasks requiring concentration and filtering irrelevant information.
7. Turel, O., He, Q., Xue, G., Xiao, L., & Bechara, A. (2014). Examination of neural systems sub-serving Facebook “addiction”. Psychological Reports, 115(3), 675–695.
• Found that excessive Facebook users show neural patterns consistent with behavioral addiction and impaired decision-making processes.
8. Firth, J., Torous, J., Stubbs, B., Firth, J. A., Steiner, G. Z., Smith, L., … & Sarris, J. (2019). The “online brain”: how the Internet may be changing our cognition. World Psychiatry, 18(2), 119–129.
• Comprehensive meta-review on how internet and social media use alters attention, memory, and social cognition.
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