📱 Simplified view of dopamine and social media

• Dopamine is often misunderstood and inaccurately described as solely addictive and harmful.
• Research shows that dopamine has a complex role in the brain, involving learning and reward signals, but is not directly equivalent to pleasure or addiction.
• Many concerns regarding social media and technology use are based on simplified and sometimes incorrect interpretations of scientific findings.

The misunderstood brain chemical

Dopamine is a neurotransmitter often discussed in contexts relating to addiction and reward, especially in relation to the use of social media. It usually goes like this:

"We all know the feeling. You post a picture on social media, and when the likes pop up, it floods your brain with gratifying dopamine."
Bill Maher

"And getting addicted, you know when you're talking about smartphones, what's happening is our brain is flooded with dopamine and then we end up becoming desensitized, needing more and more stimulation."
CBS This Morning

"You have an entire generation that has access to an addictive numbing chemical code dopamine through social media and cell phones as they're going through the high stress of adolescence."
Simon Sinek

Jason Ffeifer, who hosts the podcast Build for Tomorrow, has reacted to what he considers illogical arguments about social media and dopamine:

"Something just seemed logically off. And this is why I became a little overly fascinated with the subject, especially once I started to realize what the problem was. If every pleasurable thing we do creates dopamine, and dopamine is addictive, and our natural response to dopamine is to do more of the pleasurable thing in order to get more dopamine, then why does this cycle not happen with every single thing that's pleasurable? If we are biologically programmed to go into deep and uncontrollable pleasure cycles, then wouldn't it make sense that any pleasurable thing would trigger an addiction?

Why are we not worried about, I don't know, basketball addicts and walking in the park addicts and playing with puppies addicts? I guess the counter argument to that would be, well, those other pleasurable things don't send us notifications the way that Instagram does, nor are they constantly accessible the way that Instagram is. And also, Instagram produces a constant stream of likes and photos, which is a higher volume of input and therefore a higher volume of dopamine than basketball and walks in the parks and puppies.

And, okay, that seems fair, though I guess the counter argument to that counter argument would be, well, first of all, isn't that not how addiction works? There isn't some threshold of heroin that you have to take in order to become addicted. It can start small and build. And also, have you ever a basketball game? There is a reason to cheer every few seconds. So much dopamine. And anyway, this is what I was doing. I was having a stupid, very ill-informed debate with myself, because like I said, I am not a scientist. I don't know anything about dopamine, and here I was questioning people who I suspected also did not know anything about dopamine. So really, if I wanted to get to the bottom of this, I needed to call someone who actually knows something about dopamine."

He spoke with a couple of the world's leading dopamine researchers. They argue that statements, like those from Maher and Sinek, are not at all accurate.

Dopamine is much more complex

Despite its frequent mention in debates about digital habits and psychological effects, the scientific understanding of dopamine is far more nuanced than what is often portrayed in the media.

A common claim is that interactions on social media, such as receiving 'likes', trigger the release of dopamine which can lead to addiction, similar to the effects of drugs. However, neuroscience shows that dopamine is not only linked to pleasure. Dopamine also signals about reward and is important for learning processes, but it is not exclusively a "pleasure chemical".

It is part of a broader chemical and neural process that involves several other neurotransmitters and brain regions. Reducing dopamine's function to merely being addictive misses the broader biological and functional context.

The bigger picture

Dopamine plays a significant role in how we experience and respond to our environment, but it is an oversimplification to view its effects as exclusively harmful or addictive.

Understanding dopamine in its proper scientific context can lead to a more balanced view of technology and its impact on human behavior, which is important for a healthy debate and developing strategies for digital well-being.

Please listen to the entire episode:

This Episode Will Change Your Brain | Jason Feifer

People worry that technology changes our brains. It’s the reason why tech critics talk about dopamine, a chemical that they say turns us into social media addicts. But when I called actual brain scientists and asked them to fact-check the critics, I heard a very different story: Our brains are way more flexible than we […]

Jason Feifer

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