How dopamine addiction to technology forms

What does dopamine do in the body

Dopamine is one of the twenty major neurotransmitters. These chemicals, like couriers, carry urgent messages between neurons and other cells in the body. Thanks to neurotransmitters, the heart continues to beat and the lungs continue to breathe. Dopamine ensures that we drink water when we are thirsty and try to reproduce to pass on our genes.

In the 50s, dopamine was thought to be responsible for movement. Scientists came to this conclusion when they studied Parkinson's disease. Symptoms of this condition include tremors (tremors in the limbs or trunk), slow movements, and muscle stiffness. And it is caused by insufficient production of dopamine.

But in the 80s, after the experiments of the neuroscientist Wolfram Schultz (Wolfram Schultz) with rats, the opinion of scientists changed. Schultz conducted a number of experiments. As soon as the rat bit the food that was offered to it, there was a large release of dopamine in its brain. Learning is built on this process.

The brain anticipates a reward for some action. If we receive this reward over and over again, action becomes a habit.

These experiments proved, A neural substrate of prediction and reward, that dopamine is primarily involved in the reward system. It is associated with desires, ambition, addictions, and sex drive. It is not yet clear whether dopamine produces a pleasant sensation on its own, Schultz said. Nevertheless, it has a reputation for being a hormone of happiness.

Dopamine encourages us to take action to satisfy our needs and wants by letting us imagine how we will feel after we satisfy them.

How companies use dopamine to create addiction in users

Dopamine has become very popular and is often featured in the press. But there is a lot of talk about him in Silicon Valley. There, it is considered the secret ingredient that makes an app, game or platform potentially profitable. Entrepreneur Ramsay Brown even founded a company that uses dopamine addiction in app development, Dopamine Labs.

At the heart of the system that Dopamine Labs uses is arbitrariness. This method can be used with any habit-building app. For example, in a running application, it looks like this: the user receives a reward (a badge or a rain of confetti) not after every run, but in a random order. It would seem that this should not motivate. But according to Brown, users of this app started running on average 30% more often.

However, not everyone shares this enthusiasm. New York Times columnist David Brooks wrote: "Companies understand what triggers the release of dopamine in the brain and are adding techniques to their products that attract users." This explains the success of Facebook.

We feel an irresistible urge to visit the site, because we do not know when the notification will come, and with it - the release of dopamine.

The ability of technology to influence our behavior in this way is just beginning to be explored. However, the effectiveness of dopamine in forming habits is already familiar to anyone who is addicted to smoking and drugs. Any narcotic substance affects the reward system, provoking the production of dopamine in much larger quantities than usual. And the more often a person takes drugs, the more difficult it is for him to stop.

There are other negative consequences as well. For example, patients with Parkinson's disease take medications that fill the brain with dopamine. At the same time, almost 10% of patients become addicted Pathological gambling in Parkinson's disease: what are the risk factors and what is the role of impulsivity? from gambling.

What's next

Brown and his colleagues at Dopamine Labs know they are playing with fire. They have developed an ethical framework for themselves to decide which companies to partner with. “We talk to them, figure out what they are creating and why,” explains Brown.

“I don’t know if such applications can be addictive,” says Professor Schultz. - But the very idea that we can change the behavior of another person not with the help of drugs, but simply by placing him in a certain situation, causes a lot of controversy.

We tell people how they should behave, which is risky. If some system trains the brain to produce dopamine after certain actions, a situation may arise when a person is not able to get out of the control of this system. I am not suggesting that the companies that develop such services are doing anything wrong. Maybe they even help. But I would be careful."

However, Brown sees the use of dopamine systems as a natural pathway for the development of the human brain. In his opinion, dopamine will help us consciously form healthy habits. “We can bridge the gap between aspiration and action and create systems that help people grow,” he says.