Tech’s assault on our dopamine system

Tech companies hire departments full of highly intelligent people to figure out how to best design their products to take advantage of the features of your brain’s reward systems.

Their mission is to create addictive behavior. This process is called reward prediction error (RPE) encoding and involves a neurotransmitter called dopamine.

In the year In a 2018 interview, Chamath Palihapitiya, Facebook’s former vice president of user development, regretted helping the social media platform grow on Dopamine Feedback. “The short-term, dopamine-driven feedback loops we’ve created are disrupting how society works. Social media companies are exploiting people’s psyches for profit,” Palihapitiya said.

What are dopamine receptors?

Dopamine feedback is similar to the method that casino owners use for slot machines. If you’ve ever played slots, you’ve experienced the rush of waiting while the wheel spins. The moments between the lever pull and the result give the midbrain’s dopaminergic neurons time to increase their activity, creating a reward with each pull.

Similarly, social media companies have created a similar action, consideration and reward cycle. The action: scroll, write, share, post or comment. Anticipation: Finding new interesting content or waiting for a like or comment. And the reward is to receive one of the latter.

If you post on a social media site or other app just to get likes or comments, or open an app to see the first post, swipe to see what’s coming next, and before you know it, only 15 minutes have passed, then you’ve experienced a dopamine feedback loop.

Dangers of dopamine reactions

A dopamine-driven feedback loop causes your neurons to release excess dopamine into your system, which initially makes you feel good. The problem is that when this happens, our brain compensates for this accumulation of dopamine by pushing dopamine levels below threshold, causing us to enter a dopamine deficit state in a search for balance.

Dopamine deficiency symptoms can cause depression, hopelessness, anxiety, and more. These synthetic dopamine-driven feedback loops mimic exactly how people become addicted to drugs and keep individuals trapped in a chemically imbalanced cycle of highs and lows.

Our smartphones can be a valuable asset or a modern hypodermic needle, delivering digital dopamine 24/7 to a chemically imbalanced generation. The truth is that in the age of technology, it is almost impossible to go about life and not use a smartphone or computer. For many, especially the youth, social networking sites are an attention-grabbing and compulsive entertainment. We need technology, but it’s also important to understand, mitigate, and minimize its negative impact on our minds and bodies. So how do we achieve control and balance?

Know when you have a problem

Dr. Anna Lembke says in her book Dopamine Nation: Finding Balance in “You can tell you’re in a dopamine deficit when you scroll through social media, and you feel like you can’t stop. The age of happiness.”

“It doesn’t feel good, and you’re not getting anything out of it, but you can just keep scrolling. When we are in a dopamine deficiency, we can feel similar to depression and anxiety,” she writes.

Other symptoms of technology addiction may include:

• Sleeping less due to technology or internet activities
• Compulsively checking text messages or notifications
• Lack of interest in aspects of your life that do not involve the Internet or technology
• Feeling guilty or defensive about the time we spend online
• Turning to the Internet or a technology-enabled device to improve your mood, or to experience pleasure, relief, or sexual satisfaction
• I’m trying to cut down on internet or technology use, but I’m failing.

Dopamine deficiency symptoms

A blood test can measure dopamine levels, but it can’t tell how your brain reacts to dopamine. Therefore, doctors rely on symptoms in addition to diagnosis. Some of the symptoms are:

• You have depression; You feel hopeless.
• Are you stressed or anxious?
• You don’t feel pleasure from past pleasant experiences.
• You can’t concentrate.
• You have trouble sleeping or your sleep is disturbed.
• You have low libido.
• are you tired.
• You lack motivation and drive.
• You have gastrointestinal symptoms, including chronic constipation.

So, what can we do, and how can we balance technology’s impact on dopamine levels?

Balancing our dopamine

If we feel out of control and find ourselves experiencing addiction and low dopamine levels, it is important to break the cycle first.

Start fast with dopamine. Take 30 days off. Avoid the addictive behavior at first and then reintroduce it in moderation. This helps restore the joy-pain balance.

Turn off all phone notifications: Every notification, text message, “like” on Instagram or Facebook ad has the potential to be a positive social stimulus and dopamine rush.

Change your phone screen to grayscale: Colors attract our attention, and some can trigger the release of dopamine. The findings show that green and blue colors top the list of all colors for improving dopamine concentration. (Note the blue themes of Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook)

Create a reaction. This physical activity you do becomes its own conditioned response. For example, when you realize that you are endlessly scrolling in a dopamine loop, immediately press the home button and put the phone in front of you. Once a reaction is initiated, it becomes a conditioned response that you can use to break the dopamine-seeking-reward signal.

Dopamine diet

As we try to restore dopamine, certain foods and lifestyle choices can help us naturally increase our dopamine levels.

Eat “real food” rich in magnesium and tyrosine. These are the building blocks of dopamine synthesis. Tyrosine is an amino acid that converts to dopamine when we eat it. Also avoid processed sugar. Sugar is an anti-nutrient that affects and disrupts all nerve pathways.

Foods known to increase dopamine include chicken, almonds, apples, avocados, bananas, beans, chocolate, green leafy vegetables, green tea, lima beans, oatmeal, oranges, peas, sesame and pumpkin seeds, tomatoes, turmeric, watermelon, and wheat germ. Brazil nuts.

Fermented foods are rich in natural probiotics. Maintaining a healthy balance of beneficial microbiota in the gut biome directly affects brain health and affects mood.

Dopamine boosting activities

cold rain Cold rain increases the concentration of dopamine.

Exercise Exercise stimulates the production of new brain cells, increasing levels of dopamine, serotonin and norepinephrine.

sunlight Sunlight increases the number of dopamine receptors, while UV rays combine with vitamin D to activate genes that release dopamine.

sleep Sleep creates a feeling of dopamine. And lack of sleep reduces the number of dopamine receptors. Dopamine regulates the production and release of the sleep hormone melatonin.

Gut Health; The health of your gut flora directly affects the production of neurotransmitters. An overgrowth of bad bacteria creates toxic byproducts that damage the brain cells responsible for dopamine production.

Yoga, Meditation and Music: These activities reduce cortisol production and increase dopamine production and flow.

Sources

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5716179/

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15129844/

https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/articles/22588-dopamine-deficiency

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4154573/

http://www.princeton.edu/~ndaw/dt.pdf

Riding the Wave: Using Mindfulness to Help Cope with Urges

https://www.simplypsychology.org/operant-conditioning.html

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31408929/

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22089932/

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22293035/

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23625424/

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3598008/

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/10725161/

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK209061/

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8301978/

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3044190/

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4150910/

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3819153/

https://www.nature.com/articles/nn.2726

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17275369/

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29903615/

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30415609/

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK224629/

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32699518/

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times. Epoch Health welcomes professional discussion and friendly debate. To leave a comment, please follow these instructions and submit it in our form here.