What is dopamine?
Dopamine is the motivation molecule in our brain that focuses our attention towards pursuing things we desire and is essentially responsible for how excited, motivated or willing we are to complete a task. It is what drives us to exercise, eat and even turn up for work, but unfortunately, dopamine doesn’t care about the pursuit, just the cause.
Dysfunction in the dopamine system can cause several neurological disorders like ADHD, Parkinson’s disease and schizophrenia and more recently, it has been linked to the mental health crisis in children and teenagers due to excessive social media and smartphone use (more on the ‘dopamine industrial complex’ here).
Why should we regulate it?
As dopamine doesn’t care about what you pursue, it will focus your long and short-term behaviour on anything that will feed it - cravings - regardless of whether it’s healthy or not. The trouble starts when we don’t let our levels reset naturally, and we repeatedly engage in pleasurable behaviours (sugary foods; YouTube; video games). But, as the debt always needs to be paid, a crash into a dopamine deficit will occur, triggering the anxiety and stress to urge us to replenish our supply, and the cycle continues. Eventually, this can lead to a threshold of low dopamine that can cause us to really struggle to receive pleasure from anything at all. Hence, why it lies at the heart of all addictions, and it's concerning with children’s access to devices full of dopamine-stimulating games and videos from a young age.
How does it work?
A dopamine detox is essentially the act of reducing your exposure to activities that cause a large dopamine response for very little effort. As pain and pleasure are opposites, and need to be balanced, suffering towards a goal is essential. This doesn’t mean physically torturing yourself or your child, but instead earning dopamine by doing something challenging. This restores dopamine homeostasis (balance) as difficult pursuits trigger our ‘pain’ threshold, causing your body to pump dopamine to counteract it. Exactly the opposite of the dopamine deficit previously mentioned.
Strategies
The most effective is exercise, which is found to be more effective at treating mental health than both counselling and medication, which is not surprising once you understand the dopamine mechanisms that it triggers. Get your child involved in sports or activities that are difficult and require discipline.
Abstinence is the key tactic shared by Anna Lembke, who suggests, at least, a two-week break from the addictive source, with 30 days being the magic number. The first 10 days will be uncomfortable, but getting to the 3-4 week mark is an invaluable reset.
Supporting children to become aware of how time away from addictive activities makes them feel - become comfortable with boredom and cravings.
Cold baths/showers - promote long-lasting dopamine release.
Saunas - similar to exposure to cold - yes kids can use them just keep an eye.
Emotionally or cognitively challenging conversations.
Writing, learning an instrument, or generally overcoming obstacles.
Practising more activities which reconnect us with nature and our own thoughts, like mindfulness and walks with no technology.
Social experiences away from screens build the connections that social media artificially creates. Humans receive dopamine from shared experiences and emotions, but we need to reconnect in real life.
Telling the truth - practice honesty, which is delayed gratification, is a deep human connection that triggers dopamine and develops social connections.
If you have to use a device, limit duration, change to a greyscale display and delete over-stimulating apps.
In summary, there are many industries looking to take advantage of our dopamine system, and the negative consequences for children’s mental health are becoming apparent. It is vital that we develop a better understanding of our own health in order to avoid unintended consequences for our children in the future.
This post is especially apropos for our modern age of distraction.