Have you ever finished a delicious meal and suddenly craved a piece of chocolate? That craving arises because the pleasure of eating has ended, and your brain, eager to maintain stimulation, searches for the next source of enjoyment.
Humans naturally seek activities that make them feel good. The brain measures "feeling good" by the amount of hormones—such as dopamine—circulating in it. To maintain a steady flow, it constantly directs us toward actions that maximize these hormones. In the case of chocolate, once the meal is over, the brain instinctively searches for something else that provides a similar or greater level of satisfaction. Chocolate often emerges as an appealing choice.
However, the first bite of chocolate is always more satisfying than the last. This is because the brain self-regulates, signaling, "That's enough, move on to something else." From an evolutionary perspective, this mechanism is crucial. If early humans fixated on only one pleasurable activity, such as building shelters, they wouldn’t have diversified their skills to include hunting, farming, and socializing. To promote variety, the brain gradually reduces the reward response to repetitive tasks over time.
This pattern also appears in everyday activities like studying or working. Initially, you might feel motivated to start your homework to get it off your mind. But as time passes, that motivation fades, and your brain begins seeking alternative sources of stimulation—perhaps calling a friend, gardening, or grabbing a snack. This is simply your brain’s way of ensuring you remain engaged and hormonally balanced to facilitate learning and productivity.
In today’s digital world, the brain has an even easier time finding quick sources of stimulation. The first time you watch a hilarious cat video on Instagram Reels, your brain immediately registers Instagram as a reliable dopamine source. This memory persists because the brain dislikes being unstimulated for long, so it prioritizes recalling past activities that provided easy satisfaction. This explains the constant urge to open entertainment apps—your brain perceives your current task as less rewarding than simply watching more cat videos.
Similarly, consider a programmer debugging code. After hours of effort, a stubborn bug refuses to be solved. Frustrated, the brain—unable to generate satisfaction from failure—shifts its focus. Instead of intensifying problem-solving efforts, it searches for an immediate dopamine fix. That’s when you unconsciously reach for your phone, drawn toward the very distractions that momentarily ease your frustration.
Over time, this cycle becomes more pronounced. You might even receive a screen time notification, realizing how much time you've wasted on entertainment apps. Attempting to fight this urge by forcing yourself to focus entirely on work may succeed for a day, but exhaustion soon sets in, making the temptation to scroll through social media even stronger. The more your brain associates an app with an easy dopamine hit, the harder it becomes to resist.
Trying to fight this instinct head-on is like chopping wood with the blunt side of an axe—it’s ineffective and exhausting. A better approach is understanding why the brain works this way and using that knowledge to your advantage. Instead of simply uninstalling Instagram, a more sustainable solution is convincing yourself that it isn’t a genuine source of happiness. However, rewiring your brain isn’t easy. Since your neural pathways are already conditioned to seek stimulation from these apps, true change requires strong personal conviction.
On a final note, I was inspired to write this after hearing someone say they "needed" to watch TikTok videos to recharge from a tiring day. This made me reflect on the rabbit hole entertainment apps create. What that person didn’t realize was that the very thing they turned to for relief—TikTok—was actually contributing to their exhaustion in the first place.
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