Dozens of studies and articles confirm what we already intuitively understand: Checking social media, at least when you find something positive or interesting, releases a small amount of dopamine, the pleasure-seeking chemical in our brain. Our brain loves dopamine, so it keeps seeking it out, addicted to the possibility of incremental changes: new photos, new likes, new comments—what the man who engineered the Like button calls “bright dings of pseudo-pleasure.”3 The same principle applies to our phones, generally: It doesn’t matter if there’s always something new on the home screen each time
...more
