Dystopia now: The rise of the machines and the de-evolution of human beings
Chapter 2: The blight of Digital Dope
Not even Rick James—who once famously quipped “Cocaine is one hell of a drug" could have could have imagined modern society’s hellish addiction to cocaine of the digital kind.
Right now our computer addled-brains are being assaulted by a fire hydrant gusher of brain chemicals wreaking havoc and leading to an inconceivable plethora of problems uniquely defining of our current digital age. What’s more, we no longer need to seek out shady drug dealers in dark alleys to get our daily eight-ball fix. It’s right there in the palm of our hands. Grab your phone and computer tablets and and blast off on your dopamine powered rocket engine into the stratospheric oblivion of a virtual world where nothing is real except the destruction of your mood, motivation and relationships. Not only is is this completely legal, but corporations—our modern-day drug dealers—are figuring out new ways to incentivize and monetize our spiraling addiction.
This is the second installment in my series of essays on the effects of the de-evolution of humans via digitization and describes the horrendous effects of computers on our brain chemistry. Be sure to read the first essay here:
In order to fully grasp the deleterious effects of computer screens, we must first take a slight detour to understanding neurochemistry. Unless you’re a neuroscientist, this topic can be tedious and abstruse. For this reason I eschew highly technical details in favor of oversimplification. The details aren’t as important as the concepts are.
Our brain has over 60 brain chemicals or neurotransmitters that carry impulses and information between brain cells. For the purposes of this discussion we will focus only on the two main ones relevant to the scourge of digitization: Dopamine and Serotonin.
The neurotransmitter dopamine is produced in multiple parts of the human brain. Although popular culture and media often portray dopamine as the main chemical of pleasure, in reality dopamine is so much more. It is integral to learning, movement, memory, behavior and “motivational salience.” Motivational salience is a cognitive process that motivates an individual's behavior towards or away from a particular object. Motivational salience regulates the intensity of behaviors that facilitate the attainment of a particular goal, the amount of time and energy that an individual is willing to expend to attain a particular goal, and the risk an individual is willing to accept while working to attain a particular goal. While any description of the myriad functions of Dopamine in the animal brain will be woefully inadequate, the graphic below alludes to its critical importance across multiple animal species.
In a normal brain’s communication processes, dopamine is released by a neuron into the synapse (the small gap between two neurons), where it binds to specialized proteins called dopamine receptors on the neighboring neuron. By this process, dopamine acts as a chemical messenger, carrying a signal from neuron to neuron. Another specialized protein removes dopamine from the synapse to be recycled for later use. Dopamine levels in the brain increase in response to any type of reward. The brain’s dopamine reward pathway is stimulated by all types of reinforcing stimuli, such as food, sex, and many drugs of abuse, including cocaine. Besides reward, this circuit also regulates emotions and motivation.
Human behavior and cognition is contingent on a delicate interdependent waltz of several different neurotransmitters or brain chemicals. Serotonin and dopamine are the two most important neurotransmitters regulating mood, motivation, impulse control, aggression and reward pathways. Dysregulation of this waltz leads to mood, addiction and impulse control disorders.
While the real story of how these neurotransmitters interact with each other and are in turn affected by online activity/screen time is infinitely more complex (and a lot of it unknown) the graphic below is an excellent proposed working model.
Excessive online activity increases brain dopamine levels through the reward pathway. Dopamine’s waltz partner, Serotonin, is diminished by overexposure to artificial device lights as in staring at computer screens all day. Dopamine and serotonin levels move in opposite directions leading to addictive behaviors, increased impulsivity, anxiety and depression. While the long-term consequences of such profound brain deregulation is unknown, you don’t have to be a neuroscientist to know it doesn’t lead to happy well-adjusted, fulfilled and productive members of society.
The Scourge of digital dope
The scourge of cheap dopamine has permeated every aspect of modern human existence. Here is an incomplete list of disorders linked to the digitization of our lives.
Sleep Disorders, Anxiety and Depression: Electronic media, especially when used before bedtime has been linked to sleep disorders in children and adolescents. Young people who spend seven hours or more a day on screens are more than twice as likely to be diagnosed with depression or anxiety than those who use screens for an hour a day. Screen time was associated with a dose-dependent increase in depression risk in children. Youth reporting over 4 h of passive screen time per day were significantly more likely to meet the criteria for major depressive episode, social phobia, and generalized anxiety disorder. Our pandemic response worsened an already terrible situation.
One study discovered that children’s screen time use skyrocketed during the pandemic to an average of just under six hours per day. Some children were on their screens for a staggering 13 hours per day — nearly every waking minute.
The veritable alphabet soup of Digital Addiction: Internet Addiction Disorder (IAD), Online Social Networking Addiction (OSNA), and internet gaming disorder (IGD) are new afflictions that owe their existence wholly to computers. Depression appears to predict internet addiction and vice versa, among subjects who were free from either problem at baseline. In fact some researchers suggest that it be useful to consider problematic Internet use, insomnia, and depression jointly as all three seem to be interdependent. Depressed individuals might go into online social networking as a non-threatening means of communication with the outside world and as a means for alleviating anxiety related to personal problems.
Instead of coping or learning to cope with problems through real-world interaction with others, individuals spiral further and further down the slippery slope of depression, insomnia, and ultimately, isolation and loneliness. This mechanism could explain (at least partially) the staggering rise in mental disorders and suicidal ideation in children and young adults seen during the pandemic.
Increased Suicide risk: A US Naval Institute Publication entitled “Technology: The New Addiction” shows an alarming trend in suicide rates between the years 2008 and 2016. This is particularly steep for ages 15–34 (The most connected generation) Note, the Y axis here is the rate of change, not actual rate of suicide.
From US Naval institute: Technology: The New Addiction While I fully recognize that correlation is not causation, this gargantuan crisis knocking on our door can’t be dismissed away as coincidence and a wave of the hand. Besides, something very important happened around the years 2007-2008. Can you guess? I’ll give you a few seconds to think.
The iPhone—the real explosion in handheld computing—happened in June 2007. Hard to ignore the graph above once you consider that the highest rate change in suicidality in the most connected age group began around the time a device that enabled this connectedness hit the market and has been on a steep incline ever since.
One analysis of the The Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study from almost 12,000 participants and found that each additional hour of total screen time was prospectively associated with 1.09 higher odds of suicidal behaviors at 2-year-follow-up.
Obesity: This will be covered in greater detail in a dedicated forthcoming essay in this series. One large meta-analysis of over 112,000 participants calculated that high screen time was associated with 1.27-time higher chance of overweight/obesity among adolescents. As with depression, there appears to be a dose-response relationship between obesity risk and screen time.
Why I called them digital dope dealers
Whilst it can be argued that the health effects of screen exposure are side-effects of living in a digital environment, it is no conspiracy theory to state that corporations use weapons grade engineering and manipulation of our neural reward pathway circuits for the explicit purpose of creating addicted customers and revenue cows. They’re brain farming, and dopamine is a cash crop.
Still not convinced? Here is Sean Parker, founder of Napster and first president of Facebook in his own words. Mark Zuckerberg called Parker “pivotal in helping Facebook transform from a college project into a real company”.
“It literally changes your relationship with society, with each other. It probably interferes with productivity in weird ways. God only knows what it’s doing to our children’s brains”
When Facebook was being developed the objective was: “How do we consume as much of your time and conscious attention as possible?” It was this mindset that led to the creation of features such as the “like” button that would give users “a little dopamine hit” to encourage them to upload more content.
“It’s a social-validation feedback loop … exactly the kind of thing that a hacker like myself would come up with, because you’re exploiting a vulnerability in human psychology.”
Now imagine this same modus operandi repeated on Twitter, Instagram, Tik-Tok and every other website whose very revenue model and existence owes to feeding addiction and turning their customers into husks of their former selves. Not very different from the traditional dealer addict relationship, is it? Well, except that your dealer doesn’t spend $20 million a year lobbying the government to let them operate with impunity.
Although I admit that there is no turning back the clock on the relentless digitization of our lives, the advice of our elders and grandparents to go outside, get fresh air, touch the grass and feel sunlight on your face is even more relevant today than it has ever been. Also, ditch the digital screen and read a book instead. In the end, the only things that can save us are the things that separate us from the machines.