People online talk about getting a dopamine hit from watching funny cat videos. Does this explain why being chronically online is so bad for your health?
Dopamine is an interesting thing, and I think is misunderstood by most of us. It has become a popular word to use lately, online, to describe the rush you get while waiting for your latest funny cat video or "meme" to load. If so, it explains why, when you watch said funny cat video, you find it pleasurable, but when you show it to others, they go, "that's nice" and move on. They didn't spend several seconds waiting for it to load.
Dopamine not only rewards addictive behaviors, but it is a key component in managing motor pathways, which is why, I guess, Parkinson's patients shuffle when they walk or shake uncontrollably. Could there be a connection between Parkinson's and chronic online behavior? Maybe our brains are being saturated with dopamine from constantly clicking on memes and stories online, to the point where we cannot even walk anymore.
Perhaps. Some folks are practicing what they call "Dopamine Fasting" to wean themselves from addictive behaviors.
This got me to thinking - always a dangerous pastime - whether our addictive behaviors, particularly regarding cell phones and social media, haven't had a physical effect on our minds and bodies. I just got back from a trip to the "Free State of Florida" (no, really, they have this on the sign welcoming you at the border). Some free state - you pay tens of thousands of dollars each year in property taxes, hurricane insurance, and special assessments on your condo. Oh, and gas is 50 cents more expensive than in Georgia. Freedom isn't free they say, but geez, it makes California look affordable!
But I digress.
The point is, on long drives like this, you stop at a rest area and get out of the car and your legs feel frozen. You walk like a zombie, shuffling your feet. What's more, you notice everyone else doing the same thing. At first, I attributed this to sitting a long time - the blood pooling in your legs and forming clots ready to kill you, should they break loose and give you a stroke.
But then I remembered this is what Parkinson's feels like when the dopamine enhancers wear off. Your motor control tapers off and you, well, walk like a zombie.
Funny thing, too, lack of dopamine does weird things to your mind. You tend to get tired, irritable, and think people are plotting against you. Paranoia sets in, and it ain't pretty. Mark says, "did you take your dopamine pills?" and I do and feel "normal" again.
So I wonder. These apps on our phone and social media sites do trigger dopamine release, or so they say. Perhaps our bodies can only produce so much dopamine before it is exhausted. Or perhaps, like with caffeine, our receptors are blocked, and in response our brains create more receptors. You build up a tolerance to the dopamine - which is why addictive behavior is so addictive. You start out small and work your way up, from casual opiate user to back-alley junkie, from social drinker, to falling-down drunk alcholic.
Perhaps. It would explain a lot. It would explain why we are obsessed with our cell phones. Everyone - and I mean everyone - is online all the time, responding like Pavlov's dogs to the chime of the phone. You've got mail! And we stop what we are doing, ignore the people we are talking to in person, and check our phones for that all-important dopamine nibble.
And the people feeding us this stuff know this and are complicit. News outlets admitted that a second Trump Presidency would be "good for business" as it would drive up engagement to their sites as people look on in horror or satisfaction at the "latest outrage" of the new administration. Four years of Biden was bad for newspaper circulation!
Some sites have abandoned all pretense of being news sites. I mentioned before how Newsweek devolved from a weekly magazine (which was pretty lightweight even then) to an all-Trump outrage machine. During the Biden years, we were treated to one story after another, about how Trump was just steps away from a jail cell, or how some "expert" or "un-named source" had a withering analysis as to why Trump will be jailed. Now that that hasn't happened, they have shifted to a 100% outrage machine. I long ago learned not to click on any article that linked to Newsweek. It just wasn't worth it - no dopamine, just ads and rage-bait.
The same, of course, is true for right-wing leaning publications, many of which admit that their stance on politics is just for entertainment purposes, to rage-bait and trigger the far-right or even the mild-right. Yes, I'm looking at you, Fox News and Infowars - both have admitted their on-air personas are just that - acts - and that their "news" is strictly for entertainment purposes.
And yet, the media on both sides of the fence have the audacity to blame us for being "divided" and "hyper-partisan" while at the same time, feeding us divided and hyper-partisan news. All for a little dap of dopamine. We are addicted to this shit.
In Howard Stern's movie "Private Parts" there is a line that illustrates how this works. The station manager is reading the latest A.C. Nielsen ratings and says:"50% of listeners LOVE Howard Stern and listen for an average of 1.5 hours. Reason given? They want to hear what he'll say next!"Whether this survey was actually true, it illustrates the twisted genius of Stern and other "shock jock" and talk show hosts, as well as television programmers. Their goal is to get you to listen or watch, so they can sell you, like a pimp sells a whore, to advertisers.
"50% of listeners HATE Howard Stern and listen for an average of 2.5 hours. Reason given? They want to hear what he'll say next!"
So, what's the point? Well, for starters, I think we'll see a big rise in Parkinson's diagnoses in the coming years, if it hasn't already. This could, however, merely be an artifact of an aging population. Or, as some studies suggest, the result of some chemicals in our environment. Could be - when I was at Carrier, we had a tri-chlor tank the size of a small swimming pool, for de-greasing large machinery. The guy who ran it was crazy as a loon, and people said it was inhaling all that tri-chlor. Hell, we used to wash our hands in it.
Could it also be the result of decades of dopamine drain from not only social media, but from its precursors, such as cable television, radio, as well as activities like driving for hours every day? Other than a few key operators, I doubt many were compulsively addicted to the telegraph. But the phone? Back in the days of landlines, we all knew of the houswife or girlfriend who was perpetually on the phone, even while doing housework. And you recall, in the era of flip-phones, the cashier at Walmart who was on her phone the entire time she was scanning your groceries.
You know, personally, people who have their televisions on, 24/7 it seems, long before streaming became popular. "The talking lamp" they called it. People turned on the teevee when they woke up and turned it off only when they went to sleep, if even then. Addictive electronic behaviors have been around a long time!
Then the internet. I remember how addictive discussion groups were back in the 1990's. You'd log on to see if anyone responded to your comment. And flame wars would erupt - ensuring more engagement. I think this did not go unnoticed. When Facebook became a thing, well, I sensed it was a bottomless pit of engagement and backed out of it. That is not to say I don't check my phone first thing in the morning for the latest outrage.
But maybe this will change. Eventually, people get tired of being rage-baited and when the dopamine "hits" get smaller and smaller, people may turn away from this nonsense - and seek out some new form of dopamine addiction.
Myself, it is slowly dawning on me that my emotional energy is a finite resource and a precious one. Squander it on nonsense online, and it leaves you with less energy to do your daily chores, succeed in your career, or just be happy. Letting others tap into or drain this energy is just giving away a part of yourself, with nothing gained in return.
I used the term "emotional energy" back then, but perhaps today, I realize that this "energy" has a physical manifestation - dopamine - that literally drives you to do things. Whether these are things of value to you or not, is the question.
And maybe, lack of dopamine might explain the increasingly paranoid and extreme behaviors on both radical ends of our political spectrum. Extremist view are not only being prompted by social media and news sites, but the associated dopamine triggering is creating the propensity to get angry and go extreme.
Maybe I'm wrong about this. Maybe not. The only solution is, if I am right, is to turn away from these cheap dopamine pushers and spend more time in "real life."
Just a thought.
