Internet Addiction
Have you ever sat at your desk, excited to do you work, listing out every task you’re going to finish, putting a timeline to it, and thinking to yourself “today is the day I start my journey of hyper-productivity” … but instead of doing any of what you said you would do and be a productivity machine, you just grabbed your phone and started scrolling through your Instagram feed, as you might be doing right now? Then five minutes later, you think to yourself I should really get to work … just after this post … this one … this one. Soon you realize that an hour has gone by of you wishing for a new and interesting post, when only 1 in 20 was interesting. Why does this happen? Why do we keep getting distracted, even though we make the decision to stop, but we almost always never do? That is because of a part in our brain called The Reward Circuit.
The Reward Circuit tricks us by promising us a reward, and this reward, when we get it, will release the dopamine in our brain. Dopamine is the happiness chemical part in our brain. When the dopamine is released, we are happy with what we have received, the reward circuit is activated, and it wants more. This goes on and on and on, until the dopamine has gotten used to the content, it then wants something better, something stronger, a better high (much like the situation with drugs) and instead of letting go, your reward circuit tells you that something better is coming … soon … now … any second … the next one. This could go on for minutes, or even hours.
Internet addiction is one of the biggest issues facing the youth today. It’s not like no one knows this. Creators of social media platforms do this on purpose. It’s not a coincidence that the way we refresh the social media feed on our phone feels the same as pulling a casino slot machine lever. They both give the same feeling, the same thought of “this time I will win.” In internet context, it’s “this time, I will get the information (tweet, post, or photo) that I want,” or “I will get the like, retweet, or repost that I want.”
How can the issue of internet addiction, in the context of neuroscience, be defeated? Well, just as humans have the reward circuit, which tricks the brain into frivolous behavior, we also have something called the prefrontal cortex, which helps us make rational decisions, such as waking up as soon as the alarm goes off instead of hitting the snooze button, getting a healthy meal instead of an unhealthy one, and generally helps us make good decisions instead of bad ones. To strengthen our prefrontal cortex, which in turn weakens the reward circuit, people can do certain exercises.
One exercise would be having conversations of interest regularly, this would help a person focus on a conversation and thus reduce the chances for a distraction.
Another exercise would be to find a task or hobby in which a person can focus and flow with, this again would help a person stay focused with something useful and be stimulated by it, again reducing the chances of distraction.
Something I do is give an offline activity more time for every period of my internet time. For example, if I use social media for 5 minutes, I am going to read a book for the next 10 to 15 minutes. Or I will exercise after going on social media. Sometimes, I might even “purposely” forget my phone at a random place so I wouldn’t even give it a second thought.
Besides any exercise that one can do is to start by slowly working into having a peaceful productive day with easy flow. Because one of the things that people often do wrong as well is over-promising themselves with unrealistic results. Saying they will finish something as quickly as possible through hyper-productive solutions that eventually drain you before you start your actual work.
Go easy on yourself.
