Most of the valuable things in life require delaying gratification—putting off the pleasures of today for the promised rewards of tomorrow. It’s a simple equation for success, really. Yet, there are always times when we fall short of our own goals and expectations.
Instead of sacrificing for something better in the future, we indulge in the present—we eat too much junk food, we sleep too late, and we procrastinate for our exams. We find ourselves distracted at work or we skip the gym for a third day in a row.
And I think digital technology plays a huge role in our willpower and discipline.
The Problem: Compelling Content On The Internet
YouTube viewership grew by 200% during the early days of the pandemic. Twitter tacked on 14 million new users in the first three months of 2020 alone. TikTok expanded its user base by 75%, and 26 million new people subscribed to Netflix in just the first half of last year. Our world was already moving towards a high-tech society and the pandemic only accelerated this process. Part of the reason behind this growth is because people had less things to do. But another part of it is that online content is more compelling and stimulating than ever before.
Which is why even when we might be having dinner with friends, friends who we enjoy being around, we still get an urge in the back of our minds to pull out our phones and check our notifications.
To me, it’s not so much a sign of our inability to focus on the moment, or a sign of “how the kids these days” are just rude and uninterested. It’s more of a sign of strength—strength of what we find with a few taps on our phone.
Take Tik Tok for example. Thirty minutes on the trending page and we’ve already seen what the richest man alive 100 years ago could only hope to see. The best content from all over the world—the best dancers, best singers, catchiest music, funniest jokes, most attractive people—the top 1% of creative production.
On top of this, the platform is painstakingly engineered to personalize content most appealing to you. And the more you use the product, the better the algorithm gets at understanding what can capture your attention next.
The Result: Life Feels More Difficult Than It Used To Be
When a mouse eats a tasty snack, the dopamine levels in their nucleus accumbens rises to 150% of their baseline. When they use cocaine, it rises to 330%. And when they are given amphetamines, it skyrockets to 1000%.
Dopamine is a neurotransmitter—a chemical used by the brain to send messages between neurons. Though it has many purposes, one of its key functions is to facilitate feelings of pleasure and satisfaction in response to some environmental stimuli. And the stronger the stimuli, the more our dopamine levels increase, and the better we feel.
The more we consume content online, especially that which is stimulating and emotional, the more our dopamine levels spike. And though each time the spike may be small, they could occur hundreds or even thousands of times a day, depending on the person.
As a result, it becomes more and more difficult to do the hard things in life that are good for us and others in the long run, even if they may be difficult in the short-term. These things just don’t have the same short-term dopamine punch as scrolling through Twitter. And so overcoming the initial resistance of going to the gym, studying for a test, or putting time into a relationship becomes even harder.
We also become less engaged in the things we do for fun, like playing a sport, talking to a friend, or spending time in nature, because these things just can’t compete for our interest anymore. We’ve become accustomed to a stronger and more quickly accessible stimulus from digital content.
The Solution: Try To Separate Discovery and Engagement
There is a lot of valuable content on the internet, both educational and entertaining. A lot of this content enriches our lives, by teaching us skills and just helping us relax and get through the day. But if we want to prevent falling into the trap of short-term dopamine fixes, we have to reduce and reimagine our time online.
Perhaps when you were procrastinating for an exam, you found yourself mindlessly watching YouTube video after YouTube video, and then two hours later, you regretted the entire session. I know I have. This is often referred to as “falling down a rabbit hole”.
The YouTube up next, the infinite scroll of Twitter, or the Trending page on Tik Tok are all designed to keep us in rabbit holes. They are filled with salacious and oftentimes click-bait material. These features, in many cases, are the reason why we stay online longer than intended
To stop falling into these rabbit holes, I found I had to separate the process of discovery and engagement. Discovery is when you’re looking for new content to watch and engagement is when you actually get around to watch it. Doing both, at least for me, was a recipe for disaster.
So I downloaded an extension to block recommended videos on YouTube, disabled autoplay, and tried to never scroll through an infinite feed again. And when I want to discover new content, like a new creator to subscribe too, I set aside special time to do so. This way I can add videos to watch later, without being allured into video after video.
This keeps me engaged with content in a mindful and more fulfilling way. It makes me feel like every minute I spend online is bringing me value, instead of just serving as distraction. Plus, it reduces the overall time I spend on any given platform.
On some apps, splitting up the discovery and engagement process can be difficult, like on social media. In these situations, limiting the number of people I follow, and then not reading any side threads or comments, ensures that what I see is curated on my own terms.
The key idea here is to recognize that what we find valuable while scrolling and what we consider valuable hours later is different. In the first case, we put our primitive brain in the driver’s seat, and it wants nothing more than a short-term boost of dopamine. In the second case, we make better judgements on what is valuable enough to invest our precious time into.
In the end, each of us has to navigate the internet according to our own judgement—but we should understand that too much stimulation on the internet comes at a price—it makes the rest of our life more difficult and less fun.