What we've been getting wrong about dopamine

We’ve all heard the warning: our phones are engineered to pump our brains full of dopamine to keep us coming back for more. The apps are too shiny, the videos are too addictive, and every notification is a little surge of digital sugar we come to crave.

But why then are we still hooked on the most mundane, unexciting actions possible? That's the part that's never really made sense to me.

Am I supposed to believe that unfunny football memes in the group chat and dystopian headlines about AI are giving my brain a shot of momentary ecstasy? Because it certainly doesn't feel that way.

As it turns out, I've been getting dopamine all wrong. And I'm willing to bet I'm not alone.

For the answers, we need to look to the dopamine doyen himself, Professor Wolfram Schultz.

Through his study of macaque monkeys in the 90s, University of Cambridge neuroscientist Schultz discovered that dopamine isn't actually released when we get a reward. Instead, dopamine is the hormone of wanting, seeking, and anticipation, evolved to keep our hunter-gatherer ancestors scanning the horizon for predators or prey.

By sliding hair-thin microelectrodes into the monkey's midbrain, he could hear the exact moment dopamine neurons went click. Schultz then trained his monkeys to expect a squirt of fruit juice when a light flashed, only to discover their dopamine spiked at the light, not at the juice.

So in smartphone terms, the chemical reward doesn’t happen when we read the message or refresh the feed; it happens in the milliseconds before we unlock the screen, while our brains calculate the probability of what might be there.

And when we find something unsatisfying, the dopamine spike sinks like a stone.

This completely reframes what an "addiction" to a phone actually is. We aren't chasing a reward itself; we're chasing the anticipation.

With that in mind, it now makes a lot more sense why quitting social media and making my screen greyscale didn't cure my compulsion to check my phone. I'm simply craving the anticipation, inspite of the boring group chats, empty inboxes, and stagnant news feeds.

I don't know about you, but a better understanding of the mechanics behind my unwanted impulses is a powerful weapon in my fight against them.

Thanks, Schultz. Thultz.

~ Tom