After You Read This, Log Off

I'm not made for the brainrot era.

I feel like the pace of modern life doesn’t fit me.

Everything is too much, too fast, too often. My body lives in the past. Stuck on 90s time. Not made for constant stimulation of news, short-clips, hot takes, and images of destruction happening in all corners of the globe.

I started learning about dopamine when I got diagnosed with depression. Dopamine is known as the “feel-good” hormone. It gives you a sense of pleasure. It also gives you the motivation to do something when you’re feeling pleasure. Dopamine is part of your reward system. This system is designed, from an evolutionary standpoint, to reward you when you’re doing the things you need to do to survive — eat, drink, be the “fittest.”

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The Center for Humane Technology says that social media apps have been “strategically designed to compel us to engage, based on our human instincts. These platforms, now even more powerful with artificial intelligence (AI), are created with the intention of maximizing our engagement and increasing their profit.”

Bruce Goldman explains,

“We’re wired to connect. It’s kept us alive for millions of years in a world of scarcity and ever-present danger. Moving in tribes safeguards against predators, optimizes scarce resources and facilitates pair bonding. Our brains release dopamine when we make human connections, which incentivizes us to do it again.

But social connection has become druggified by social-media apps, making us vulnerable to compulsive overconsumption. These apps can cause the release of large amounts of dopamine into our brains’ reward pathway all at once, just like heroin, or meth, or alcohol. They do that by amplifying the feel-good properties that attract humans to each other in the first place.

Then there’s novelty. Dopamine is triggered by our brain’s search-and-explore functions, telling us, “Hey, pay attention to this, something new has come along.” Add to that the artificial intelligence algorithms that learn what we’ve liked before and suggest new things that are similar but not exactly the same, and we’re off and running.

Further, our brains aren’t equipped to process the millions of comparisons the virtual world demands. We can become overwhelmed by our inability to measure up to these “perfect” people who exist only in the Matrix. We give up trying and sink into depression, or what neuroscientists called “learned helplessness.”

Upon signing off, the brain is plunged into a dopamine-deficit state as it attempts to adapt to the unnaturally high levels of dopamine social media just released. Which is why social media often feels good while we’re doing it but horrible as soon as we stop.”

2024: “inspired, unplugged” digital detox gathering

I am intentional about my social media usage (and the lack thereof) because of the research above. I pull my attention back from the apps often to “detox” from the addiction. I log off whenever I want (or need) to be fully present in my life. I log off whenever I start feeling weighed down.

Sometimes I feel guilty (embarrassed?) about taking breaks from the noise. At some point in the last decade, I started attaching moral value to being up to date. I see a lot of “if you aren’t angry, you aren’t paying attention” rhetoric floating around and it makes me feel like I’m doing something wrong.

But I know I’m not.

I have to remind myself that being in the know — without breaks to process and consciously respond — has real consequences.

I can’t speak for everybody, but I know that when I tumble down the rabbit hole, I distract myself instead of facing my feelings and attending to my needs. I regularly see people locked in to the device — still and slumped, forgetting to drink water, bent over the screen like candy canes. It makes me sad for us.

I’m not making a stand for ignorance, here, either. Let me be clear. I believe in facing reality and being conscious about what is happening in this shared world. But I also believe in balance.

The more we consume, the less we integrate. And integration is where wisdom lives. Without it, information is just chaos filling your mind with noise.

This is a loving reminder to consider how much you can hold before you need to put something down.

If you take from yourself, give it back. Okay?

Just some Monday thoughts. Logging off now.

Love you,
Jamila