Dopamine, Social Media - and Tigers

A couple of moments from this weekend stand out for me.

The first happened over lunch. A young couple sat at the table opposite - and barely spoke to each other. They barely even looked at each other, or the beautiful view in front of them. Instead, they were staring at their phones from the moment they sat down, to the moment they left …

I also visited a local wildlife sanctuary. They have several tigers, rescued from various places around the world. The tigers were - of course - behind bars. It would clearly be ludicrous to have them roaming freely: “Oh, sorry our tiger bit you - but it’s not our fault. You can’t expect us to control them!”

The young couple were addicted to the dopamine hits that apps provide - the little rewards we get from the gazillion pings and notifications our phones bombard us with. [It’s the exact same trigger mechanism that slot machines work on]. And the problem with dopamine is that it doesn’t satisfy us - we can never get ‘enough’ - we always want more, so we keep going back to our phones again and again and again …

The apps are specifically designed to claim as much of our attention as possible [so our attention can be sold to advertisers], and yet the companies responsible for those dopamine hits claim it’s not their fault. They are letting the tiger roam free.

This is one simple example of the predicament we face: a focus on profit and growth above all else is causing companies to make decisions that are hurting us. It’s no-one’s ‘fault’ - not the couple, not the execs at the companies, not me, not you [and not the tiger].

Rather, it’s the system we have built. It rewards the endless accumulation of money - which is why it’s apparently OK to build apps that damage our mental health - or to create hyper-processed food that is damaging our physical health - or to continue burning fossil fuels that are damaging our planet …

And so, it’s back to work for me, trying to do my bit to raise awareness of the metacrisis - what it is, and why it matters.

Feel free to reach out if you’d like to chat about it.

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This post was inspired by a bunch of different people, including Kate Darling talking about what animals can teach us about AI, the work of the Center for Humane Technology, and a recent interview between David Epstein and Jonathan Haidt on Haidt’s new book, The Anxious Generation.

And the image is of the view that the young couple were missing …