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Can We Drop the Digital Dopamine?

Digital dopamine – those quick hits of pleasure we get when something online tickles our nucleus accumbens, sometimes called our brain’s pleasure center.

Nothing wrong with a little pleasure, of course. Or a lot of pleasure, for that matter.

It’s a question of balance.

Senator Jake Auchincloss says digital dopamine is consuming us and it’s time to focus on getting more satisfaction in real life rather than from social media, to say nothing of online sports betting and pornography.

I’m not against online activity.

After all, you and I are communicating online right now. You may have found me in your inbox today. Or you might have come across this article on a network like LinkedIn or Facebook. I depend on all those virtual tools to stay in touch with you.

Seems to me that the congressman is right, though, when he says we’ve stacked the deck in favor of virtual reality over material reality.

And that’s especially true for young men.

It’s all about the brain, as Auchincloss explains. “Their nucleus accumbens is highly sensitive,” he says. “Their prefrontal cortex, which is vital for controlling behavior, is underdeveloped.”

That makes them perfect targets for porn sites and gambling platforms and the social media whose algorithms feed them a steady diet of spicy, and sometimes dangerous, content.

The senator suggests we get busy now to regulate what’s available to young people online. At the same time, he says, we need to make IRL activity more rewarding.

I’m not a young man, and it’s a pretty good bet you’re not, either.

So besides being concerned for our sons and grandsons and neighbor kids, how does this drift toward digital dopamine affect us?

Odds are we’re moving away from face-to-face interactions the same way the young ones are.

I see how easy it is to default to a quick “like” on a LinkedIn post or a comment on Instagram in place of a simple phone call, never mind an actual in-person conversation.

Life and business and yes, even romance moved online during the pandemic, didn’t it? And for many of us, they’ve never moved all the way back to the way things used to be until March of 2020. Truth is, we may never be the way we were before COVID.

Still, the lopsided focus on virtual interaction can’t be good for people like us, any more than it’s good for that 20-year-old guy down the street with no job, no romantic relationship, and no real hope for the future.

So what do we do about it?

Auchincloss proposes to fortify real life contact through business. Building more homes, creating trade schools, and launching tough tech companies. (They use cutting edge engineering and science to solve our most difficult problems.)

I’d settle for a lunch date, myself.

Seriously. We need both, don’t we? Work opportunities that get people out of their homes and away from their screens. And social opportunities that involve actual human contact at a park, in a restaurant, at a place of worship. Or even at an arcade.

What’s on your calendar this week?

I took a look at mine. I’m having lunch with friends two days this week. A session with my physical therapist and two with my trainer. A manicure—that counts as in-real-life, right?

And a couple of meetings with a spiritual bent.

I’ll also be spending a lot of evenings at home, alone. That’s the way my life is these days. Maybe I should do something about that?

Senator Auchincloss says, “It’s time to fight for IRL.”

I’m not sure I want to fight. I am game though, for shifting the balance in my own life between the time I spend online and the time I spend in the company of actual human beings.

Facebook has gotten stale for me, anyway. Love being in touch with friends old and new. I just hate the increasing amount of crap in my Facebook feed. And it’s not just the ads, though they’re obnoxious.

I’m sick of the fake news stories that seem to be AI-generated. Celebrities who’ve done noble things, or the opposite. Political pieces that are wholly or partly the work of some bot’s imagination. Heartwarming tales without foundation.

It’s not clear to me how Meta benefits from sloshing all that dreck onto our devices. I would like to see less of it though.

So, I’m going to work on filling my calendar with more IRL activity and less of that dreaded digital dopamine.

Maybe you’ll launch this experiment with me? Let me know what you plan to do to boost your real-life interactions with a comment below.