Are you finding alone with your thoughts to be boring? Do you break out into a cold sweat at the notion of making a meal, brushing your teeth, or going for a stroll without a podcast, TV show, or music playing? According to a social media trend, if this is the case, you would benefit greatly from a “dopamine detox.”
It entails recognizing the habits you use too regularly to get a boost, namely things like social networking, gaming, and TV viewing, and giving them a rest for a few days to a week. Recalibrating your brain’s reward circuits is the aim.
Despite some evidence to the contrary, the majority of research focuses on clinical addictions rather than the everyday temptations we are all faced with.
That hasn’t stopped content producers from exaggerating the research to make irrational promises of unrivalled pleasure, productivity, academic achievement, and abundant wealth from a digital detox. Even while a little getaway might be enjoyable, it won’t significantly alter the course of your life. Greater effort is required for real transformation.
However, if your expectations are reasonable, you can discover that a digital detox is an effective tool for introspection.
Function of dopamine in the brain
Because dopamine is susceptible to stimuli like social media, a “dopamine detox” concentrates on that specific brain molecule. Theoretically, temporarily removing these triggers from your life should rebalance your brain’s dopamine reserves and improve the balance of your pleasure canters.
Of course, the chemistry of the brain is more nuanced than that. Dopamine is only one neurochemical that contributes to happiness, and taking a few days off from technology won’t change your brain’s wiring. However, according to Dr. Anna Lembke, a professor of psychiatry at Stanford University School of Medicine and the author of the book Dopamine Nation: Finding Balance in the Age of Indulgence, it can help you identify the triggers you’re relying on. She claims that when we consume digital media, including podcasts, TikTok, TV episodes, and music, a significant amount of dopamine is released in the reward pathway, a particular area of the brain. A positive emotion is triggered in the brain when dopamine is sent hurling down this channel. You can get this tiny boost from any pleasant stimuli, such a piece of candy, a “like” on a post, or the beginning of your favorite music.
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This route functions best when it begins to hum naturally and spikes at various times during the day, such as during meals. However, according to Lembke, the majority of the information on our phones is made to aggressively stimulate the reward pathway, so regular usage should potentially release a “firehose of dopamine stimulation.”
Research on drug addiction, which hijacks the same reward pathways as technology addiction, has largely contributed to our knowledge of how the brain reacts to constant stimulation from our gadgets. According to Lembke, “our brain begins to downregulate our own dopamine production and transmission, to bring it back to normal in order to compensate.”
Feelings of despair and anxiety can be brought on by a dopamine deficiency, which can be brought on by the extremes of all types of addiction. Lembke says, “Now we need to keep doing these things—consuming digital media—not to feel good and joyful, but merely to feel normal. A cleanse may be beneficial in this situation.
Can your reward circuits truly be reset by a “dopamine detox”?
In this situation, the word “detox” is deceptive. Dopamine is produced in the brain and is neither dangerous nor unnatural, thus the adjective used to describe its removal does not apply to it. Although the dopamine-specific reward pathway is meant to be starved of continual activation by the practice, which is also frequently referred to as a “fast,” the chemical is still present and active throughout.
