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What surprised / struck you when you watched this video?

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5 Crazy Ways Social Media Is Changing Your Brain Right Now

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What are some of the benefits of social media according to Eva Amin? Give your opinion of them.

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Social media isn't bad: you're just using it wrong | Eva Amin | TEDxCherryCreekWomen

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What do you think is the greatest benefit of the internet? Why?

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Impact Of The Internet On Modern Society - Tech Business News

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The Internet is changing our society. While we once relied on local communities to stay in touch with one another, that is no longer the case.

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What tips did you pick up here for avoiding distractions?

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How Smartphones Sabotage Your Brain's Ability to Focus | WSJ

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Can "self-awareness and education" prevent social media from harming teenage girls or should there be a minimum age for having a social media account?

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September is National Suicide Prevention Month and The 19th is looking at how gender factors into the political and cultural forces at play in suicide prevention.
In May, Surgeon General Vivek Murthy issued a new advisory on the effects social media usage can have on teen mental health, specifically calling attention to the way it can perpetuate body dissatisfaction, disordered eating behaviors and social comparison in adolescent girls.

Videos and pictures on image-based social media platforms can trigger intense episodes of self-comparison in adolescent and teen girls. Because of their still-developing brains, they may process this self-comparison in ways that can pose real risks to their mental health - and lives. Suicide is the second leading cause of death among those with anorexia nervosa, and suicidal behavior is more likely among those with bulimia nervosa and binge eating disorder.

"The more teenage girls are on social media and exposed to image-based social media in particular, the more likely they are to have poor body image," said Amanda Raffoul, an instructor at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and an expert on eating disorder prevention.

Since eating disorders have among the highest mortality rates of any psychiatric illness, and they also elevate a person's risk of dying by suicide, awareness about the connection between social media and disordered eating is an important tool for parents and those who works with young people to have. Also important, though, is not scapegoating social media for adverse mental health outcomes without a more nuanced understanding of the dynamics at play.

According to a 2022 study done by the Pew Research Center, 92 percent of teen girls report using YouTube. Another 73 percent say they use TikTok, 69 percent say they use Instagram and 64 percent say they use Snapchat. Girls are more likely than boys to say they spend too much time on social media - 41 percent to 31 percent - and also are more likely than boys to say that it would be hard for them to give up social media, 58 percent compared to 49 percent, the survey found.

One problem that drives the development of eating disorders and self-harming behavior, Raffoul said, is a societal acceptance of body dissatisfaction in teen girls as a normal. That assumption can create a dangerous environment for teens to engage in social media, when the images they see can make them question their appearance and value, but the feelings they experience might be overlooked as "typical."

Image-based platforms like Instagram and TikTok often force users by default to compare themselves to the people they are seeing online. When it comes to teen girls, this can "promote some really unrealistic appearance ideals," Raffoul said.

"Even if someone knows or is aware on a surface level that everything they see might not be real, if you're constantly bombarded with those images, it is going to alter your perceptions of yourself in some way, especially when you're in adolescence," she said. "The adolescent brain is wired differently than the adult brain or even a child's brain, which puts them at a very specific risk when it comes to social media use."

In adolescents, the part of the brain that processes emotions develops faster than the part that develops judgment and critical thinking. For adolescent girls, this can mean responding emotionally to content they see on social media before having the ability to think about it critically, yielding a situation in which they think that "weight loss techniques on TikTok need to be something they need to engage in in order to be happy, be successful and be valued," Raffoul said.

Many parents don't understand, Raffoul said, how different a teen girl's social media feed might look then their own. For adolescent and teen girls, this can mean seeing content that shows increasingly radical thoughts about dieting and dieting trends, many of which emerge on platforms like TikTok long before they hit the radar of parents, educators and clinicians. Writing off girls' concerns about their bodies as normal can heighten this danger, she said, especially if parents are on some level reinforcing negative body talk at home.

But just as parents' need to be wary of not normalizing body dissatisfaction in their daughters, they also need to be cautious of not simply scapegoating social media as the source of all harm, and stopping the conversation there. Jacqueline Nesi, an assistant professor and psychologist at Brown University who studies the role of social media in adolescents' mental health, told The 19th that there is often a strong desire from those who care about children's wellbeing to pinpoint a single factor that leads to mental illness or suicide in teens. But hand-wringing about social media isn't going to move the needle, she said.

"I do think that there are many things that can be done to improve the health and safety of social media platforms and that those things should be done, but I don't think that even by doing those things that's how we're going to solve the mental health issues we're seeing right now," she said.

Janis Whitlock is a senior adviser at The Jed Foundation (JED), a nonprofit that protects emotional health and prevents suicide in American teens and young adults, and an expert on self-injury in girls. In addition to being attuned to how their child might be impacted by their social media intake, parents also must be aware that being on social media isn't inherently bad. Whitlock also stressed that social media is "not intrinsically bad" and is a "core contributor to our evolution and our ability to thrive."

"What it comes with, however, is an overwhelming responsibility for parents and schools in particular to help young people become self-aware," Whitlock said.

She stressed that real help for young people means teaching them how to hone and develop a sophisticated level of awareness about how their social media diets make them feel, and how to monitor themselves for "red flag feelings" like overstimulation, depression or agitation - especially when these feelings feel rooted in self-comparison.

"Our young people need to have more self-awareness and we need to have more systems to cultivate that in them earlier," she said.

Whitlock said parents and schools might overlook something critical to the work of suicide prevention in teen girls: teaching digital literacy and at younger ages. She said just like previous generations were taught to be aware of how advertisers might try to market things to them from shampoo to cigarettes, parents and educators need to help kids understand that social media is also about consumer choice and that they need to approach their social media diets with an awareness that they can always opt in and out.

And this can be a tipping point for disordered eating, self-harm, and even suicidal ideation in some girls. Teen girls, she said, can feel "hypervigilant about learning the rules of society" as they transition out of childhood, which also means taking in a lot of information about understanding what society expects and values out of them as young women and understanding that they need to master what other people find value in. The reality is that their developing brains are not designed to triage the amount of information they are receiving about bodies and value, she said.

"Teen girls are really hyper vulnerable to physical parameters because they learn early on that how you look and how you present comes with a value sign of some sort," Whitlock said.

Teens as young as 13 and 14 can sometimes find themselves in a position where they are consuming massive amounts of information about femininity and bodies online and left wondering whether or not they can be successful in an imagined future. The ability to imagine a future for yourself, she said, is a key protective factor against suicide.

"There's this alchemy of worry which can be contributed by what you're encountering online, which is definitely linked to mental health," Whitlock said.

Nesi, the researcher at Brown, listed the "real risks" - namely, the threat social media can pose to teen girls getting an adequate amount of sleep, preventing in-person socialization, and exposure to "explicitly dangerous" content, which can exacerbate eating disorders or encourage self harm or suicide. But she emphasized that too often, people saw all social media as the problem when there was more to it.

A better approach, Nesi suggests, would be drilling down into specifics, asking specifically how and for which demographics of teen girls social media is having disproportionate negative mental health outcomes. (According to the Pew research, Black and Hispanic teens say they are on image-based social media platforms like YouTube, TikTok and Instagram "almost constantly" at a five time higher rate than White teens.) It's a question that also necessitates understanding that no two teen girls are having the same experiences online - and that simply blaming social media as the blanket cause for all negative mental health outcomes can fail to pinpoint the most acute factors at play for some individuals.

"I think what we really need to be thinking about is how we can maximize the benefits [of social media] for as many kids as possible while minimizing the risks that we know are very real for a number of kids. I think that nuance gets lost sometimes," Nesi said.

Whitlock said that while parental fears about social media are understandable, the public health focus today needs to ensure that teaching parents and those who work with children that social media's impact on girls' mental health is a conversation requiring nuance.

Since social media isn't going away, simply demonizing it as the root of the potential for mental health disorders, eating disorders, and suicide can be a misstep in understanding how teen girls are instead responding to real components of the world around them. And part of this, Whitlock said, means parents putting in the work to make sure there are designated times for connection with their children happening offline, so they can better listen to their children - and allow their daughters space to process any things they are feeling as a result of their social media lives.

"It's really about self-awareness and education," Whitlock stressed. "That's why I think we need to help them understand themselves, their vulnerabilities, how they recognize when they're getting triggered online and how to get out of it - how to pause or pull back. Those are very adult skills that our young people now have to learn because of what we've created."
If you or a loved one are in crisis, please call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (8255), or contact the Crisis Text Line by texting TALK to 74174.

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The complicated ties between teenage girls and social media - and what parents should know

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Experts say the relationship between social media, self comparison, body image and self harm means that there's no singular culprit in the youth mental health crisis.

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Trigger warning: content on eating disorders

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The night of 23 June 2020 passed by like any other for 16-year-old Carson Bride. The teen had just gotten a new job at a pizza restaurant, his mother, Kristin Bride, said, and the family had been celebrating at home in Lake Oswego, Oregon. He wrote his future work schedule on the kitchen calendar after dinner, said goodnight, and went to his room for bed. But the next morning, Kristin says, the family woke to "complete shock and horror": Carson had died by suicide.

Kristin soon discovered that in the days leading up to his death, her son had received hundreds of harassing messages on Yolo - a third-party app that at the time was integrated into Snapchat and allowed users to communicate anonymously. Search history on Carson's phone revealed some of his final hours online were spent desperately researching how to find who was behind the harassment and how to put an end to it.

After Carson's death and the harassment Kristen says contributed to it, the mother tried to take action to prevent such tragedy from striking again - but found herself running into walls. She says she contacted Yolo four times only to be ignored until receiving a single automated response email. She filed charges against Snapchat and the two anonymous messaging apps it hosted in May 2021, in a suit that is partially ongoing. Days after the suit was filed, Snapchat removed Yolo and LMK, the other app, from the platform, and a year later the company banned all apps with anonymous messaging features.

The company declined to comment on the suit specifically, but a spokesperson noted that in 2020 it added an in-app support tool for users who may be experiencing mental health crises called Here for You.

"Snapchat was intentionally designed to be different from traditional social media, with a focus on helping Snapchatters communicate with their close friends in an environment that prioritizes their safety and privacy," said Ashley Adams, a spokesperson for Snap, the parent company of Snapchat.

"While we will always have more work to do, we feel good about the role Snapchat plays in helping close friends feel connected, happy and prepared as they face the many challenges of adolescence."

Carson Bride. Photograph: Kristn Bride

Kristin said the changes made by Snap and other apps felt like a victory - but one that was "bittersweet".

"For those of us who have lost our children to online harms, it feels like Whac-A-Mole," she said. "You want to honor your child by putting an end to it, but that is not happening because these companies won't self-regulate when all they care about is profit. When I look at the whole scope of this mess, it feels like I just made a tiny impact."

'Defectively designed'

Kristin Bride's lawsuit is one of hundreds filed in the US against social media firms in the past two years by family members of children who have been affected by online harms. Lawyers and experts expect that number to increase in the coming year as legal strategies to fight the companies evolve and cases gain momentum.

In February this year, a master complaint was filed combining lawsuits from more than 400 plaintiffs across the US against social media firms for their "role in creating a youth mental health crisis through their addictive services". The suit distills the claims into 18 counts, alleging that the social media firms have created defective and addictive products that would knowingly cause harm to young users and failed to warn parents and children of those effects. Other counts include violations of consumer protection laws and enabling the distribution of sexually explicit content of minors.

The suit targets TikTok's owner, ByteDance, YouTube owner Alphabet, Facebook owner Meta and Snapchat owner Snap Inc. It includes not only cases of suicidal behavior following harassment like in Bride's case, but broader harms alleged to be caused by social media.

The master complaint alleges that the social media products were "defectively designed" in that they create "an inherent risk of danger". Dangers cited include risk of "abuse, addiction and compulsive use by youth which can lead to a cascade of harms". Harms listed include dissociative behavior, social isolation, damage to body image and self-worth, suicidal ideation and self-harm.

Social media firms have spoken out against the suit, with YouTube stating that the allegations are "simply not true". A spokesperson from Meta said that the company has developed more than 30 tools to support teens and their family members on company platforms and invested in technology that "finds and removes content related to suicide, self-injury or eating disorders before anyone reports it to us".

"These are complex issues but we will continue working with experts and listening to parents to develop new tools, features and policies that are effective and meet the needs of teens and their families," the spokesperson said.

While social media firms have long faced scrutiny from Congress and civil rights organizations over their impact on young users, the new wave of lawsuits underscores how parents are increasingly leading the charge, said Jim Steyer, an attorney and founder of Common Sense media, a non-profit that advocates for children's online safety.

"This is a major shift from where we were a decade ago," he said. "People see the impact on their own children, they know the platforms are intentionally designed to addict their kids into harmful stuff, and they are fed up. The tide has turned."

New strategies to take down big tech

Calls to address the harms caused by social media have been intensifying for years, drawing bipartisan support in and outside Congress. Even Meta's CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, told US Congress in 2021 that it "may make sense for there to be liability for some of the content".

But concrete legislative action has yet to materialize. Parents, legal teams and non-profits battling social media firms typically have one answer as to why: Section 230 - a portion of a 1996 US law, the Communications Decency Act, that they say effectively shields online platforms from responsibility for illegal actions of their users.

Kristin Bride sits next to a photo of her son Carson Bride as she appears before a Senate committee on the judiciary hearing to examine protecting our children online. Photograph: Dpa Picture Alliance/Alamy

"Section 230 has been liberally construed far beyond its language or intent, and until recently had been seen as a veritable carte blanche for social media companies to operate with complete immunity," said Matthew P Bergman, founding attorney of the Social Media Victims Law Center, a law firm dedicated exclusively to representing the families of children that are harmed by social media.

After repeatedly facing companies who blocked lawsuits by invoking Section 230 protections, Bergman and his firm employed a new strategy: product liability law. In other words, rather than targeting problematic content hosted on platforms, the legal teams allege the product itself is defective. They argue the product is addictive and harmful by design - and the companies were obligated to do more to warn and protect their users. It's a method that has been used across the decades in a number of major legal movements, from lawsuits targeting corporations over opioids, cigarettes and asbestos.

The Social Media Victims Law Center has had varying levels of success with this new argument, but Bergman - who has a background in asbestos litigation - said the most important result was that cases are able to be heard at all.

"This is not a question of whether we win or lose - this is a question of whether we get to play the game," he said.

Part of that game is forcing companies to go through the litigation process, including discovery, during which attorneys can request evidence and information from social media firms to help make their cases. Regardless of outcomes, this process will bring more information to light, Bergman said.

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"Because these companies had been exonerated before, they've never had to subject themselves to depositions, produce documents, or answer questions under oath," he said. "They have been allowed to operate in the dark."

The effects of these strategies are already being seen, with a judge in November denying social media firms' attempt to throw out a slew of legal cases around child safety and stating that section 230 does not shield them from all legal liability. That decision came as 42 states and the District of Columbia last month sued Meta for youth addiction to the company's social media platforms in a landmark case.

A separate case filed by the state of New Mexico in December 2023 alleged that Meta allowed its social media platforms, Facebook and Instagram, to become marketplaces for child predators.

Multiple education boards and school districts also filed class-action suits in 2023 against social media firms over alleged harm caused to their student bodies by these platforms. Additionally, the CEOs of the biggest social media firms - including Meta, TikTok and Snap - have been subpoenaed to testify at a US Senate judiciary hearing on 31 January about their "failure to protect children online".

"We anticipate that 2024 will be a year of robust litigation, in which more families come forward to hold companies accountable for the carnage that social media platforms have inflicted on our young people," Bergman said. "We have no doubt that this is going to be a long, hard slog but we know that now we at least have a path forward."

'I did everything that a mom could do'

Joann Bogard and her son, Mason. Photograph: Joann Bogard

As lawsuits make their way slowly through the court systems, social media companies claim they have put in a growing number of guardrails to protect children on their platforms - but grieving parents say the measures are insufficient and poorly enforced.

When Joann Bogard lost her 15-year-old son Mason to a "choking challenge" - an online trend in which participants temporarily asphyxiate themselves - she had implemented all of the safety measures available on YouTube. Still, dangerous videos were able to reach her son on the platform, despite violating its policies, which explicitly ban content relating to "harmful or dangerous acts, challenges and pranks".

"I did everything that a mom could do, and it still wasn't enough," she said. "It's not a fair fight for parents to go up against these billion-dollar companies who pay employees a lot of money to come up with ways to keep our kids engaged."

Bogard is currently involved in a class-action lawsuit against YouTube and TikTok that alleges the platforms failed to stop the spread of choking challenge videos. Other plaintiffs in that case claim the platforms also enable or promote cyberbullying and the use of unlawful drugs. TikTok did not immediately respond to request for comment.

Ivy Choi, a spokesperson for YouTube, said regarding Bogard's suit that YouTube has "invested heavily in the policies, resources and products needed to protect the YouTube community" over the years. "In accordance with our policies prohibiting extremely dangerous challenges, we remove choking challenge videos on YouTube," she said.

Parents say they are still facing an uphill battle against powerful companies to stem a deluge of content similar to that which led to their children's deaths. Bogard said once a week she searches online platforms for videos containing the "choking challenge" and reports any that she finds. Despite such content being against most platforms' policies, often the videos remain online.

"As traumatizing as it is for me to go online every week and do the job that the social network should be doing, I do it, because I don't ever want to see another family go through what we have gone through," she said. "I want other families to be protected, and the only way to do that is to speak out and spread awareness."

As parents continue their fight to get meaningful legislation passed to stem the harms they say are caused by social media, many are working to address the issue through other means. Family members of children lost to online harms have launched advocacy campaigns, support groups, and educational resources.

Bogard started a Facebook page in honor of her son called " Mason's Message ", where she posts tips for parents to keep their children safe on social media. She and Bride helped co-found the Online Harms Prevention Work Group - an operation within the online safety non-profit Fairplay that incorporates knowledge from experts and parents to promote best practices for parents and advocate for legislation.

Most recently the group has fiercely advocated for the Kids Online Safety Act - a bill that would increase parental control over children's online experiences and force companies to collect less data on children, as well as implement more safeguards. KOSA now has 49 co-sponsors and is scheduled to be voted on in the Senate in January.

Bogard said she and the parents she works with recognize they are going up against a "huge entity" in their fight with social media firms, and must take a varied approach.

"It's going to take more than just a federal bill, more than just a lawsuit, and more than just education - all of those thingstogether are key to making a difference," she said. "I want to make sure no parent ever has to bury their child for something as senseless and preventable as this. This is how I can honor my son."

In the US, you can call or text the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline on 988, chat on 988lifeline.org, or text HOME to 741741 to connect with a crisis counselor. In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans can be contacted on freephone 116 123, or email jo@samaritans.org or jo@samaritans.ie. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international helplines can be found at befrienders.org

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'The tide has turned': why parents are suing US social media firms after their children's death

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Social media firms have faced scrutiny from Congress over their impact on young users, but parents who have lost kids to online harm are now leading the charge

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Spanish teens spend an average of 2.4 hours a day on social media networks. Is this true of you and your friends? Or does this surprise you? 

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Spanish teens spend an average of 2.4 hours a day on social media networks. Is this true of you and your friends? Or does this surprise you? 

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Source: Sigma Dos by Trust Survey, March 2023

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What are some of the issues raised by Alana Lintao here?

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Chronically Online: The Epidemic of The Century | Alana Lintao | TEDxBayonne

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Any other comments or reflections after watching "I am Gen Z"?

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Any other comments or reflections after watching "I am Gen Z"?

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Listen to this brief podcast. How does this relate to your own experience?

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The Stronger Minds Podcast is where I bring you everything you need to know to build a healthier brain and a stronger mind, including food and nutrition, psychology, lifestyle, mental habits and debating big ideas. From Chartered Psychologist Kimberley…

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The President delivers a 'State of the Union' Speech every year, but that's a snooze. Just look at your worthy representatives struggling to keep their eyes open. That's because they've heard it all before.

We have too. Not much changes in politics. Certainly not the candidates.

There's more variety at my local gas station, where at least I get to choose from three types of fuel and five flavors of Big Gulp.

So forget about politics. All the action now is happening in mainstream culture-which is changing at warp speed.

That's why we need a "State of the Culture" speech instead. My address last year was quoted and cited, and was absolutely true back then-but it's already as obsolete as the ChatGPT-1 help desk at the Bored Ape Yacht Club.

In fact, 2024 may be the most fast-paced-and dangerous-time ever for the creative economy. And that will be true, no matter what happens in November.

So let's plunge in.

I want to tell you why entertainment is dead. And what's coming to take its place.

If the culture was like politics, you would get just two choices. They might look like this.

Many creative people think these are the only options-both for them and their audience. Either they give the audience what it wants (the entertainer's job) or else they put demands on the public (that's where art begins).

But they're dead wrong.

Maybe it's smarter to view the creative economy like a food chain. If you're an artist-or are striving to become one-your reality often feels like this.

Until recently, the entertainment industry has been on a growth tear-so much so, that anything artsy or indie or alternative got squeezed as collateral damage.

But even this disturbing picture isn't disturbing enough. That's because it misses the single biggest change happening right now.

We're witnessing the birth of a post-entertainment culture. And it won't help the arts. In fact, it won't help society at all.

Even that big whale is in trouble. Entertainment companies are struggling in ways nobody anticipated just a few years ago.

Consider the movie business:

The TV business also hit a wall in 2023. After years of steady growth, the number of scripted series has started shrinking.

Music may be in the worst state of them all. Just consider Sony's huge move a few days ago- investing in Michael Jackson's song catalog at a valuation of $1.2 billion. No label would invest even a fraction of that amount in launching new artists.

In 2024, musicians are actually worth more old than young, dead than alive.

This raises the obvious question. How can demand for new entertainment shrink? What can possibly replace it?

But something will replace it. It's already starting to happen.

Here's a better model of the cultural food chain in the year 2024.

The key is that each stimulus only lasts a few seconds, and must be repeated.

It's a huge business, and will soon be larger than arts and entertainment combined. Everything is getting turned into TikTok-an aptly named platform for a business based on stimuli that must be repeated after only a few ticks of the clock.

This is more than just the hot trend of 2024. It can last forever-because it's based on body chemistry, not fashion or aesthetics.

Our brain rewards these brief bursts of distraction. The neurochemical dopamine is released, and this makes us feel good-so we want to repeat the stimulus.

The cycle looks like this.

This is a familiar model for addiction.

Only now it is getting applied to culture and the creative world-and billions of people. They are unwitting volunteers in the largest social engineering experiment in human history.

Here's the future cultural food chain-pursued aggressively by tech platforms that now dominate every aspect of our lives.

The tech platforms aren't like the Medici in Florence, or those other rich patrons of the arts. They don't want to find the next Michelangelo or Mozart. They want to create a world of junkies-because they will be the dealers.

Addiction is the goal.

They don't say it openly, but they don't need to. Just look at what they do.

Everything is designed to lock users into an addictive cycle.

The platforms are all shifting to scrolling and reeling interfaces where stimuli optimize the dopamine doom loop.

Anything that might persuade you to leave the platform-a news story, or any outside link-is brutally punished by their algorithms. It might liberate you from your dependent junkie status, and that can't be allowed.

But wait, there's more! Apple, Facebook, and others are now telling you to put on their virtual reality headsets-where you are swallowed up by the stimuli, like those tiny fish in my food chain charts. You're invited to live as a passive recipient of make-believe experiences, like a pod slave in The Matrix.

The tech CEOs know this is harmful, but they do it anyway. A whistleblower released internal documents showing how Instagram use leads to depression, anxiety, and suicidal thoughts. Mark Zuckerberg was told all the disturbing details.

He doesn't care. The CEOs all know the score. The more their tech gets used, the worse all the psychic metrics get.

But still they push aggressively forward-they don't want to lose market share to the other dopamine cartel members. And with a special focus on children. They figured out what every junk peddler already knows: It's more profitable to get users locked in while they're young.

And the virtual reality headsets raise even more issues-because they rewire users' brains. Experts are already talking about "simulator sickness," and that's just the physical nausea, dizziness, and headaches. Imagine the psychic dislocations.

And you thought artists had it tough back in the day?

Instead of movies, users get served up an endless sequence of 15-second videos. Instead of symphonies, listeners hear bite-sized melodies, usually accompanied by one of these tiny videos-just enough for a dopamine hit, and no more.

This is the new culture. And its most striking feature is the absence of Culture (with a capital C) or even mindless entertainment-both get replaced by compulsive activity.

So don't be surprised when huge corporations stop pretending otherwise-hence entertainment businesses that suddenly embrace gambling, or other equally addictive offerings. (Now you know why the Super Bowl took place in Las Vegas-a perfect symbol for the current moment in our culture.)

Everything is gamified. Anything can be scrollable. You can simulate any boat you row.

But what does this do to our brains? To our lives? To the future?

That seems like a paradox.

How can pursuing pleasure lead to less pleasure? But that's how our brains are wired (perhaps as a protective mechanism). At a certain point, addicts still pursue the stimulus, but more to avoid the pain of dopamine deprivation.

People addicted to painkillers have the same experience. Beyond a certain level, opioid dependence actually makes the pain worse.

What happens when this same experience is delivered to everybody, via their phones? The results are devastating, as expert Dr. Len Lantz explains. Even people who thought they were immune to addictive behavior, get destroyed by the cycle:

There is a specific, abnormal brain activation pattern that is present in people who have anhedonia, which is a key feature of major depression, and absent in those who do not. It is often the case that when patients come to me with major depression, they say, "I shouldn't be depressed. I have a good life. If my friends or coworkers knew I was depressed, they wouldn't understand or they would be mad at me. They think I have it made. So, why don't I feel that way?"

We're now seeing the first effects on a grand social scale of this deadening effect.

Sure, let's give it a name, something like TikTok depression or Silicon Valley zombification or whatever. The key fact is that users can feel it, even if they don't have a label or a diagnosis. They feel it even if the technocrats refuse to tell them about it. Just listen to the words people use to describe their toxic online interactions: doomscrolling, trolling, doxxing, gaslighting, etc.

In the year 2024, this is what we do for fun.

Some companies get people hooked with pills and needles. Others with apps and algorithms. But either way, it's just churning out junkies.

That's our dystopian future. Not so much Orwell's 1984-more like Huxley's Brave New World.

She shares an example:

My patient Sophie, a Stanford undergraduate from South Korea, came in seeking help for depression and anxiety. Among the many things we talked about, she told me she spends most of her waking hours plugged into some kind of device: Instagramming, YouTubing, listening to podcasts and playlists.

In session with her I suggested she try walking to class without listening to anything and just letting her own thoughts bubble to the surface.

She looked at me both incredulous and afraid.

"Why would I do that?" she asked, openmouthed.

A week later, Sophie returned and reported on the new experience: "It was hard at first. But then I got used to it and even kind of liked it. I started noticing the trees."

Not long ago, I'd have dismissed anecdotes like this. I couldn't really imagine somebody addicted to Instagram or TikTok or some other phone app.

But I don't need to imagine anything now. I see those sad-eyed junkies, hooked to their devices, wherever I go. And even their facial expressions convey that haggard strungout look.

This is the real state of play in our culture in 2024.

And it's a bigger issue than just struggling artists or floundering media companies. The dopamine cartel is now aggravating our worst social problems-in education, in workplaces, and in private life.

But you will hardly hear about this-because too many people are making far too much money from the dopamine culture.

If you thought the drug cartels were rich, wait till you see how much money the dopamine cartel is making. For a start, check out the market cap at Apple, Meta, etc. They are literally too big to stop.

But they can be named and shamed. If the politicians won't do it, we can-and must.

Just telling the truth about the dopamine cartel would be a major step forward for the culture in 2024.

Also, do yourself a favor. Unplug yourself from time to time, and start noticing the trees or your goofy pets. They actually look better in real life than in the headset.

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My quest for a healthier relationship with technology

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When AI Can Fake Reality, Who Can You Trust? | Sam Gregory | TED