Written by:- Pulkit sood, Btech (Computer Science) GNDU,Punjab
Youth wasting their dopamine drive refers to the phenomenon where young people over stimulate their brain’s reward system with instant gratification—such as endless social media scrolling, gaming, and junk food. Endless (infinite) scrolling has been a core feature of Instagram since it launched in October 2010. From day one, the app utilized continuous scrolling to eliminate pagination (having to click “next page”), allowing users to browse their chronological feeds simply by swiping up . While the foundational endless scrolling feature has always existed, Instagram made it significantly more addictive by transitioning from a chronological feed to an algorithmic feed in 2016, and later introducing Suggested Posts to the end of the user’s feed. This ensures that you never run out of new content or hit a natural stopping point.
Dopamine is a crucial chemical messenger (neurotransmitter) in the brain that helps regulate feelings of pleasure, motivation, memory, and motor control..Today youth is running before the cheap dopamine.
Nowadays the average screen time of an Indian teenager is about 5-6 hours. Before 2010, the average screen time for a teenager in India was significantly lower than today, typically ranging between 1.5 to 2.5 hours per day. This increase in the screen time is causing brain fog.( Brain fog is a feeling of mental cloudiness that makes thinking, focusing, and remembering harder than usual). This increase in screen time decrease the outdoor activities of the children causing nearsightedness (myopia) as children blink less while concentrating on the screens. I know increased screen time is not only reason there are many other factors like genetics , diet etc.
It is the simple psychology that human brain needs reward means dopamine and find easy ways to get that. All day scrolling (Doom scrolling) on Instagram or YouTube or any other social media is a cheap way of getting dopamine. For example when we work out and see the results on our body then that time dopamine is released which is good for us which motivates us to follow discipline so that our body can become more better, when we do yoga our mind calms down and again dopamine is released which is good for us, when we work hard day and night for an exam and score good grades in it gives us happiness and again dopamine is released . But doom scrolling at social media platforms make youth waste their precious time as well as their dopamine drive which will end up making the youth unsuccessful and not leading them living a meaningful life.
Even games are made in such a way that once we play them we cannot resist our self playing them again. After spending too much time on these addictive games when realize that we have wasted too much time then we are left over with nothing but regret. Do you know why this is happening? Let me tell you , before making the video games the owners of the video games keep a meeting of human psychologists so that they can make the video games more and more addictive. This is done because they do not care about the mental health of the youth they want more and more customers on their respective platforms so that we spend more and more time and they can earn more and more money. This is making our youth weak as they do not perform any outdoor activities; they do not want to talk to any other person even their own family members. This addiction is as addictive as the addiction of smoking or the addiction of alcohol or any drugs. This is very dangerous for human society.
Back in lockdown I remember many people started sharing their lifestyle on social media platforms but now this is becoming sharing of vulgarity. This is true that social media platforms have provided us freedom to post but it is our responsibility to post sensible things. For some views on social media people start posting vulgar content. This sharing of vulgar content on social media platforms gives them more reach to the youth. There are many works that they can do to earn their livings but this is not the right way. This will surely effect the brain of today’s youth. Consistently watching vulgar or explicit videos heavily alters the brain’s reward system and decision-making pathways. It triggers massive dopamine surges, leading to decreased motivation, weakened impulse control, and potential difficulties in experiencing satisfaction from everyday, real-life relationships and activities. The things which are to be known at a certain age nowadays are known before that particular age.
My suggestion to today’s youth will be to reset their dopamine derive and follow delayed gratification. What exactly is delayed gratification? Delayed gratification means the work which do not give us instant happiness but it will sure show results in future. Like improving soft skills like reading, listening, writing, public speaking as well as hard skills like AI ,ML, IT security, coding, Web development , teaching , even typing on keyboard etc. Another suggestion to reduce screen time is to make your mobile phone screen black and white. Studies show that shifting your phone to black-and-white (grayscale) decreases screen time by an average of 20 to 50 minutes per day. One more suggestion I would like to give to today’s youth that instead of watching brain rotting videos on internet they should read some spiritual books so that they can live a meaningful life.
