Dopamine Fiends
How They Turned Us All Into Addicts
As I begin this article, while waiting for the initial blank page syndrome to pass, I twice check my phone.
In front of me sit a dozen teenage boys and girls on a communal table. Their laptops and school books are in front of them, but they are more interested in each other. Contagious laughter spreads between them, their grinning faces filled with vitality and joy.
To my left is a young woman, appearing hypnotised, endlessly scrolling through her phone, before her boyfriend appears and steals her attention. As she looks up from her seat, her relieved smile betrays the prison he saved her from.
I find myself thinking about the people walking the bustling city streets with their attention on their phones. I reflect on the families sharing a living room, yet remaining absent from each other, lost in their individual screens. I wonder about the people lying in bed, ignoring the movie playing on their big screen as they tap on their little screen. Then there are the people on public transport, saved from the surrounding hum drum by a text notification, smirking while scrolling through endless random memes.
Everywhere I look, I witness a society rife with addiction to…
When the word did not come to me, I mindlessly picked up my phone for another hit of dopamine. I’m back now. And yes, even in myself, I witness an addiction to that hit. That high-value notification. That updated statistic in my dashboard. That perfect post which dazzles my imagination for a few seconds. We have become a society of dopamine fiends.
Yet as I now stare outside, and appreciate the rustling leaves of a tree, the spring sun shimmering off their surface, and as one of the girls in the teenager group before me rises to her feet, and begins dancing with arm raised in the air, for absolutely no decipherable reason, I find hope. I find a world fighting against the rising virtual tide, threatening to swallow us whole, forever trapping us in its dystopian ‘reality’.
A New Age Emerges
I grew up in the 90s, during the advent of the ‘Dopamine Age’. I still recall the satisfaction I got when my Nokia 5110 gave that double beep to signify I had received a text message from a friend. Because mobile phones were still becoming a thing, my phone network offered free, unlimited SMS messages after 8:00 pm to help hook the new generation. It was during this time that my attachment to the phone was forged, one text message at a time, with a double beep from the right person having the power to make my day.
In the decade that followed, Facebook and the iPhone emerged as the dominant social media network and device respectively. One provided infinite windows into the lives of our friends and the greater world, and the other offered a rich realm of seemingly-magical apps to explore.
At the time, I knew nothing about dopamine. I had no clue that I possessed a ‘reward system’ which released a chemical anytime something made me feel good or surprised me with its novelty. I was too naive to understand that this dopamine system was the pathway toward addiction. Above all, I was oblivious to the fact that my iPhone and Facebook account were hijacking my dopamine reward circuit with each new innovative app and every red notification symbol.
Now, I am aware. And yet the tide continues rising all around me.
What’s Reality Got To Do With It?
In 2015, Apple released their ‘Apple Watch’. Instead of the virtual world calling from inside your pocket, it could now lead you in by the hand like a child.
A year earlier, Google tried to make internet-connected glasses a thing, yet failed due to their awkward appearance. Now, Meta has teamed up with Ray-Ban to make the concept not only palatable, but stylish. With merely your voice, you can capture what you see and have it analysed online however you wish. The ‘information highway’ between the online and offline worlds is inching nearer.
Speaking of Meta, their Quest VR headset promises to take you all the way in, immersing you in a virtual world catering to all your desires while promising to “redefine digital gaming and entertainment”. Many people are rightly unsettled or down-right terrified of the idea of spending the bulk of their waking hours in a virtual world.
Circling back to Apple, we find a solution to help allay our fears: Augmented reality. Rather than the headset replacing our world altogether, it creates a virtual reality on top of the real thing via a pass-through effect using cameras. This mimics what we have now, where we dwell in the real world while focussed on the virtual one in our phones.
What is clear from these developments is how the tech companies are gradually bringing the virtual world closer to us, while taking care not to startle us. They are like a lioness in the shadows approaching a sun-drenched zebra eating grass in the wild.
To Believe Or Not To Believe
‘Suspension of disbelief’ is the state of switching off our critical thinking while consuming a piece of fiction. The idea is that if we question the story too much, it will affect our ability to enjoy and take in the narrative.
Usually the responsibility lies with both the reader and the author or screenwriter. The writer’s job is to plug any plot holes, fix all imperfections, and pace the story in a way where one event feels naturally connected to the next one. As for the reader, they only need to chill out and not take the story too seriously.
This concept applies equally to technology. It is the same mindset you experience when you ‘forget’ about the world and instead believe that the pixels on your screen represent reality.
Software developers spend countless hours pouring over their code, ensuring the final product functions as seamlessly as possible. Steve Jobs micro-managed and tortured the iPhone team at every turn, aiming to remove all obstacles, delays and frustrations in using the device.
From the beginning, tech and social media companies have succeeded in convincing us that their creations are indispensable from reality. They achieved this in part through our suspension of disbelief, while exploiting our hunger for reward and delight.
Leaving The World Of Wonder Behind
What would your iPhone be without the internet?
I tried to answer that question recently, when I removed the SIM card from my phone for two entire months. The only time I had connectivity was when I was home. When I was in public, I was offline.
The first thing I noticed was the unsettling heaviness of withdrawal. My body ached to be online, to be exposed to the infinite ‘rewards’, delights and possibilities. In the first weeks, I found myself rushing to a place with wifi so I could connect and get my hit. Yet eventually, the withdrawals faded. I downloaded some music and podcasts for offline listening, and made do with what I had. On the train, I found myself leaning more into guided meditations.
Another fascinating side-effect of being offline for the bulk of my day is how present I am with my loved ones now. Gone are those urges to check my phone, or my impatience when an activity kept me offline for too long. A one-hour board game session with my nephew was fun from beginning to end. I’m more physically active, and creative ideas are flooding my consciousness. My energy levels are higher and more consistent, and I am more productive.
I still seek out rewards, yet they tend to come from creative and communalacts rather than endless consumption. My nephew and I have been bantering back and forth like wildfire, almost creating a new language in the process. My writing has grown prolific, almost rabid. I’m journalling more often, and plotting out new business ideas. The shift has been nothing short of astonishing. Rather than imprisoning me, my dopamine reward system is forging new pathways which offer boundless freedom and potential in the real world.
And with that, I am slowly discovering the road toward recovery from my addiction.
Creating A New World
An iPhone with no internet, would be an iPhone without the ‘i’. That would make it ‘just’ a phone. And what does a phone do? It allows us to call others. What are we seeking when we call someone? Connection.
Yet connection to our loved ones is not our only need. While social media promises to connect us relationally, what technology ultimately strives to replace is our connection to source. Google Search, Google Maps, AI Technology and the infinite scroll in our social media have an omnipotent quality akin to God. They aim to be infinite and all-powerful. It is this feeling which we long for when we are offline. The question which remains is: Why seek God out there when you can find Him in here in your device?
Many of us addicts have come to agree with this sentiment. As the virtual tide has engrossed us, we have come to forsake everything: The world, God, and each other.
As I continue to pour out this article in a creative blitz, joyfully riding the flow within me, I am surprised by where the momentum is taking me. I have picked up my phone a couple of times, but only when I was stuck on what to write next. When lost in the flow, I never touch my phone. The reward is not only in the final product, but the entire creative process. Even though I usually have an idea of the ‘theme’ of the piece, I am always delighted by where I end up.
I understand why people switch off from each other and go to their phones instead. I do. People are complicated, and connecting with them in a way that delights and enlightens us can be hard work. When triggered, people bite. Or worse, they cut us off, reminding us of that painful feeling of despair when the internet disconnects suddenly. The more trauma we accumulate in our lives, the more difficult connection becomes. Meanwhile, droves of developers are working day-in-day-out to make the virtual world more delightful, more seamless and more vast than ever before.
Yet let us switch off that damned tunnel vision that technology has conditioned us into, and zoom out. Let us consider not the short-term rewards, but the ultimate reward: Our legacy.
When all is said and done, will you look back and chuckle about that meme which cracked you up once? Will you reminisce on that hours-long gaming session? Or would you prefer to smile warmly while recalling how you belly laughed with your loved ones so hard your ribs hurt? How about reflecting on the body of work you left behind that has impacted countless lives? How many random adventures do you wish to have before the end? Will you wish you had endured the struggle to live and love well, rather than numbing out online?
We can go even deeper. Every minute you spend deepening your connection within, or evolving yourself in general, echoes out into eternity. Every ounce of trauma released makes you more grounded, more joyful and more loving to the people around you. This impacts their lives in ways you cannot fathom. Every act of creativity and spontaneous connection not only brings rewards in the moment, but has a butterfly effect on the entire planet via the people you come into contact with.
An abiding and authentic connection to people and source awaits you. Is that what you want, or is it the new Apple Vision Pro which you crave instead?
