Revive Your Vocabulary: Stop Letting Social Media Dull Your Mind

We all know that frustrating feeling when a word is stuck on the tip of your tongue. You know you know it, but your brain just won’t give it up. Then hours later, boom, it pops right into your head when you’re not even thinking about it.

Scientists call this the tip of the tongue phenomenon, and it happens to everyone. Your brain gets the concept of the word but can’t quite connect it to the actual letters and sounds. It’s like your mental filing cabinet got a little disorganized, which is exactly what happens when we don’t use our brains the way God intended.

Here’s what the liberal academics won’t tell you. This happens more when you don’t use a word regularly or haven’t used it recently. In other words, if you’re glued to your phone scrolling social media instead of reading good books and having real conversations, your vocabulary suffers.

The research shows that staying stuck in that frustrating state actually makes it worse. The longer you struggle to remember a word, the more likely you’ll forget it again next time. Your brain is literally learning to fail, which should be a wake up call for parents everywhere about screen time and dumbed down education.

Americans used to pride themselves on sharp minds and strong vocabularies. We read the classics, we debated ideas, and we kept our brains active with real intellectual challenge. Now we let autocorrect do the thinking for us and wonder why we can’t remember basic words.

The good news is this is totally fixable with old fashioned hard work. Use your brain or lose it, as the saying goes. Read real books, learn new words, have actual conversations without your face buried in a device.

Your brain needs exercise just like your body does. That’s common sense that doesn’t require a fancy study from some ivory tower university. The more you challenge yourself mentally, the stronger those neural connections become.

This should be a reminder that personal responsibility extends to our mental fitness too. Nobody else can keep your mind sharp for you. It takes discipline and effort, the same values that built this great nation in the first place.