Are you drowned in the internet? I am.
“Two young fish swimming along happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way who happily greets them‘Morning boys, how’s the water?’ and the two young fish swim with a careless indifference and eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes ‘What the hell is water?’ ”
We are all swimming in the Internet and not realising how significantly it is changing our lives. All the good changes are welcome, but the inadvertent impacts are HUGEE!!
You don’t believe me? I challenge you to read the entire blog post without opening your phone or any other tab. Were you able to do it?
Could you stop yourself and read the entire blog? Then you are a Modern Buddha.
Heavy internet usage -is a behavioural addiction!!
Do you find yourself watching YouTube at 1 a.m, but you know that you have to go to work early in morning or go to gym.?
Do your children cry for more phone/ computer time and they are not interested in playing outside with other children?
Do you open your facebook or insta feed again and again? You want more and more likes on your post and worried when you don’t get as many?
Do you open your phone again and again without knowing why you opened it? Do you keep checking your mail?
Did you try installing any app to increase productivity — ‘stay focusd’ or ‘pomodoro timer’ etc., as you felt you are spending way more time on social media?
Could you related to any of these pics?
Then someone may be on a slippery slope of internet addiction!!!!
But why? — There is ‘reward mechanism’ in our brain
Why do we, for example: while preparing for an exam, get impulsively moved to watch how many likes our Facebook post has got or open the YouTube ‘watch later ‘ list and start watching automatically? Why do we enter thinking ” I’ll be here for 1 min”,but finally I’ll be end up spending atleast 30 min. Why?
And did you realize that you never feel good or confident about yourself, after looking at YouTube for 2 hours? You always say to yourself “damn, what a waste of time”!!!
The reason for internet fixation:
Do you know why? At the huge risk of risk of Over-simplification, I’ll try to explain in a simple way. To make this knowledge usble.
| 😇 😇 😇 😇 😇 — What angel says? | 😈 😈 😈 😈 😈 😈 — REWARD CIRCUIT MECHANISM |
| Do what is right! | Do what feels good right now!! |
| Will-power | Impulsiveness |
| Benefits are gained in long – term. Delayed gratification | Benefits/ rewards are immediate. Immediate gratification. |
| The angel is roughly pre-frontal cortex. For ex: Says — wake up early and go to gym | The devil is crudely the reward-circuit mechanism. For ex: eat that pizza – it is tasty!!! |
| Addiction decreases functionality of pre-frontal cortex –> reduces will power. (For ex: obese people find it harder to stop themselves from over-eating) | Addiction give more power to reward system. |
Internet – the subtle addiction caused by ‘reward mechanism’
Narcotics are so strongly addictive that the negative effects are obvious. But what about things that are less addictive and cause more subtle changes? — welcome to Internet. Like any addictive drugs, certain ways of using the internet can cause a particularly strong release of dopamine.
Dopamine is a key player in the reward circuit. Dopamine is released in response to receiving a reward or in anticipation of a reward. The purpose of this dopamine is to learn how to get that reward again.
Unexpected rewards and curiosity:
When an unexpected reward comes along, for example: once upon a time, when an early man was strolling along in the forest and saw a water source or a tasty fruit tree, his brain says “hey!!! I didn’t expect this fruit tree!! Awesome!! what did I do to get that reward? And how can we get it again?? It releases dopamine and makes him feel good.
Also in this way the brain initiates learning when getting an unexpected reward was very useful. Dopamine was linked to the fruit tree (unexpected reward) – while exploring forest was the cue for the reward.
Internet – a novelty machine, always creating anticipation for reward and strengthening the devil
Depending on how you use it, the internet can also elevate dopamine to unnatural levels. This is because the internet is a novelty machine, something dopamine is particularly reactive to.
We arewired to crave new information, and new information is interpreted like a reward. If we weren’t curious about new things, we wouldn’t find new sources of water, food or shelter. This novelty is why it’s so easy to watch random news channels about a murder case or find yourself scrolling through social media websites, swiping through apps like imgur or tinder and clicking through YouTube for way longer than you intended. Each of these reward you with some level of novelty for a very easy behavior – swipe of a thumb or click of a finger.
YBut… it doesn’t end. You can still swipe for the chance to get another cool picture so your dopamine remains elevated. This never ending novelty is what leads to the abnormal elevation of dopamine.
Explaining compulsive/ addictive behaviours
Dopamine keeps track of what behaviors done in what situations will get you rewards, and then motivates you to do those behaviors. Browsing forest and exploring forest was the cue and the reward was finding ‘something!! something useful and a dopamine release!!.
This explains why cues like seeing a bar where we drink alcohol or seeing a friend smoking cigarette can trigger dopamine rises and therefore cravings in us. It needs some helping hand from prefrontal cortex’s job is to get you to stop. Our angel must be strong.
Why is this novelty machine all the more dangerous?
- Easy rewards making addiction very easy
- Homeostasis
- Design of internet products is done in a such a way to keep you hooked
1. Easy rewards
BJ Fogg, a stanford researcher, hypothesized that for any human behavior (B) — the likelihood of these simple actions like clicking a ‘play’ button on youTube, or swipe of a thumb to browse for more feed, done in anticipation of a reward etc., is
Behaviour (B) = Motivation * Ability * Trigger
B.J Fogg
2. It is easy in the start until it hits a slippery slope – Homeostasis
Why it is harder to get out after it is too late?
Our bodies are constantly trying to remain in a state of balance- this is called “homeostasis”. Things like your blood sugar levels, Ph level, your temperature and blood pressure are all finely regulated.
Stimulation is also something your body tries to regulate. For example, heavy internet users constantly activate dopamine receptors. They browse their feed hoping they find something interesting. Something useful. They are able to ignore 10 useless feeds, to hit the interesting 11th feed. And once they hit, there is a dopamine rise. A small rise is enough to keep us ‘hooked’.
To maintain balance and regulate stimulation, the brain “downregulates” or decreases the number of receptors available and the user becomes less responsible.
Less receptors available means less dopamine signaling and it becomes harder for everyday activities to provide enough dopamine to motivate the heavy internet user.
Because of this, they will start to lose interest in hobbies and long term goals which require much more effort and don’t provide as much dopamine. Receptor downregulation decreases general wanting and motivation to do everyday things. However, craving or wanting for the internet, drastically increases.
Now imagine the ways your and your children’s brains are altering!!
3. The devious ways the internet products/ apps are designed:
I personally have participated in meeting for designing apps. The only agenda is how to keep people ‘Coming back’ to the platform? How to make visitors spend more time?. This appears very unethical, but apps are designed to keep you ‘hooked’.
(review will be done in future) that the key to a successful content platform is having the cue to use the website or application come from within the user.
A negative feeling is most effective – being bored might be a trigger to use Reddit/ YouTube and being lonely would be a trigger to use Tinder or Facebook. This is very powerful because the cue can come at any time and lies ‘within’ the user. Apps should be designed with internal triggers in mind.
Nir Eyal in his book ‘Hooked’ – referring to the internal triggers which make ‘apps’ successful
In Summary – Internet is just like a drug!!
We have seen how our brain works, why reward circuit mechanism of brain is evolved, why internet is so addictive, why once you start becoming dependent on internet — it becomes harder to listen to angel’s voice, why do you have to be aware of internet product’s design which are designed to keep us hooked.
I hope by this article I have explained you, why internet is no less than any addictive drug. The easy ways in which you get a dopamine surge, the easy behaviour needed to get that reward, the ubiquitous presence of internet all of this make internet very very addictive. Especially to children, who are gullible and don’t have a strong angel’s voice. They are still developing their mental faculties!
I’ll be posting in the next post on how to come out of this ‘internet fixation’,increase productivity and how I started using Internet for my benefit. After all food is a necessity, but if you overeat you become obese. Partying with alcohol in moderate limits, once in a while may be good for our social life. But you all know the disastrous effects of alcohol!!
Same is with Internet, but this is more potent.
First published on circlesnlines.wordpress.com, preserved here.