Bed Rotting: The History, Meaning, and Why We’re Scrolling Instead of Having Sex

What Is Bed Rotting?

“Bed rotting” isn’t just a meme—it’s a cultural mirror.

Officially defined in February 2024 by Dictionary.com as “the practice of spending many hours in bed during the day, often with snacks or an electronic device, as a voluntary retreat from activity or stress,” the phrase has taken off across TikTok, Instagram, and every group chat where someone admits:

I haven’t left my bed in 14 hours.

At its core, bed rotting is about withdrawal. But whether it’s withdrawal for self-care or avoidance is the ongoing debate.

The Origins: From Hurkle-Durkle to TikTok

The roots of bed rotting stretch back centuries. In Scotland, the phrase hurkle-durkle described lingering under the covers long after the day began. It was lazy, yes, but also restorative.

The modern spin came in 2018, when viral tweets—like Conan Gray’s quip about “spending the entire day rotting in bed”—caught fire online. By 2023, TikTok creators were sharing clips of themselves snacking and scrolling in bed, framing the act as both defiance of hustle culture and a strangely glamorous way to do nothing.

Why Gen Z Embraced Bed Rotting

For Gen Z, bed rotting became more than laziness—it was resistance. Against hustle culture. Against 5 a.m. routines. Against toxic productivity.

A 2025 survey showed that 48% of Gen Z admit to bed rotting often or sometimes, while millennials aren’t far behind. Another U.S. poll revealed Americans average 15 full days a year of bed rotting; Gen Z pushes it to 21.

What earlier generations called “lounging” or “taking a sick day,” Gen Z reframed as a lifestyle.

The Newest Definition: Doomscrolling Instead of Sex

The trend has taken a sharper turn. Bed rotting no longer just means eating pretzels in bed while ignoring your email. Increasingly, it means lying in bed, glued to your phone, scrolling endlessly—sometimes literally choosing TikTok over intimacy.

A 2025 UK survey found that 1 in 10 adults would rather doomscroll than have sex. Collectively, Brits now spend more than 67 million hours a day scrolling through negative or sensational content.

Psychologists say this isn’t harmless.

Harvard Health warns that doomscrolling worsens anxiety, disrupts sleep, and erodes resilience. Neuroscientists even describe it as “brain rot”: constant scrolling dulls motivation, drains attention spans, and yes—kills the mood.

The message is clear: bed rotting has become less about rest, more about avoidance.

Is Bed Rotting Self-Care or Avoidance?

The truth depends on how it’s practiced.

• The Self-Care Side: Writers at Self Magazine argue that bed rotting offers a guilt-free break, especially in a culture that glorifies exhaustion. A day under the covers can actually help recalibrate the nervous system.

• The Downside: Mental health experts caution that when rotting turns into compulsive scrolling, it risks deepening depression and anxiety. Instead of healing, the bed becomes a hiding place.

Why It Matters

Bed rotting started as a cheeky meme. Then it became a generational rallying cry for rest. And by now, it’s a morphed yet again into a cultural alarm bell about how easily we replace intimacy with algorithms.

The bed isn’t the enemy. But the screen might be.

What was once a place of refuge is now a stage for our compulsions—where we doomscroll while the person next to us quietly gives up and goes to sleep.

So by all means: rot. Take your day off.

But put the phone down sometimes. Because the ultimate decadence isn’t scrolling—it’s receiving bestowed attention.

REFERENCES:

Harvard Health Publishing. (2020). Doomscrolling: Why we do it, and how to stop. Harvard Medical School.

Realsimple. (2023). What is hurkle-durkle?.

Thred. (2023). Gen Z and the rise of bed rotting escapism.

Amerisleep. (2023). Survey: Bed rotting habits in the U.S..

Verywell Mind. (2023). Bed rotting: Expert opinions on the viral self-care trend.

Fast Company Middle East. (2025). Bed rotting has gone mainstream.

UNILAD. (2025). People would rather doomscroll than have intimacy.

The Sun. (2025). Brits doomscroll more than they have sex.

Wikipedia. (2024). Bed rotting.

Self. (2023). Bed rotting as self-care.

New York Post. (2024). What is brain rot?.