Featured Image Credit: TikTok/rnbw.infinity.nikki
Topics: TikTok, Health, Mental Health
Ben Thompson
People have been ditching white noise in favour of brown noise after discovering it on TikTok.
Many of us have trouble sleeping or concentrating and need some background noise on to calm our minds - whether that's some music or white noise.
But have you heard of brown noise?
Well, the ADHD community on TikTok have been finding it incredibly helpful in keeping their minds calm, and it's become an absolute sensation on the platform.
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Check it out below:
Captioned 'Is this how most people’s brains feel all the time??!' one user's video shows her listening to the low-sounding roaring noise with the words "Brown noise is so much better than white noise. My brain is quiet for the first time ever.'
Not to be confused with the brown note – a smellier counterpart – brown noise is one of the many colours of noise, which also includes white noise, pink noise and blue noise.
Brown noise isn't dissimilar to white noise, but is much deeper – it has the sound of a low roar like a strong waterfall.
This is because, according to Live Science, unlike white noise – thats spectral density (power per Hertz) is even throughout all frequencies – brown noise has a spectral density that's inversely proportional to its frequency squared. Essentially, this means that its power significantly decreases as its frequency increases.
Brown noise doesn't get its moniker from the colour; it is in fact named after botanist Robert Brown, who discovered Brownian motion (random particle motion) in the 1800s. It's also known as Brownian noise is because its change in sound signal from one moment to the next is random.
Brown noise is also sometimes called red noise because it's analogous to red light, which has a low frequency.
Comments on the TikTok user's videos were in agreement that brown noise is better than white noise.
One user wrote: "This is why I love the sound of fans and air conditioning."
Another added: "Oh, oh I actually feel??? Comfortable?"
In another TikTok video, the user wrote: "If you're wondering, brown noise ... cured my ADHD.
"Why? I don't know.
"What I do know is that anytime I put it on I'm sucked into a vortex of hyper focus and the world just makes sense.
"Have I cracked the code?
"Maybe."