• Email Us: [email protected]
  • Contact Us: +1 718 874 1545
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Medical Market Report

  • Home
  • All Reports
  • About Us
  • Contact Us

Caught In A “Dopamine Trap” – What Does That Mean?

July 17, 2024 by Deborah Bloomfield

Binge-watching TV shows, doom-scrolling on social media, excessive gaming. All these behaviors have been associated with being caught in a “dopamine trap”. But what does this mean and what is dopamine’s role in our compulsive behaviors?

What is dopamine?

Dopamine is one of the main signaling molecules in the brain. It is often sensationalized as a rewarding “feel good” molecule, but it is actually involved in a whole host of things: movement, learning, and even breast milk production.

Dopamine is also linked to addiction, tying it to compulsive behaviors that give us instant gratification. Is the irresistible scrolling, swiping, or gaming a form of addiction? 

This is where the “dopamine trap” theory comes in. 

What is a “dopamine trap”?

Every time you scroll or watch an episode, you get a tiny hit of rewarding dopamine. And then another. And another. But that is quickly followed by a comedown or dopamine dip. “Our brain compensates by bringing us lower and lower and lower,” said Dr Anna Lembke to The Guardian. She is a psychiatrist studying addiction and the opioid epidemic, and the author of Dopamine Nation: Finding Balance in the Age of Indulgence.

So you keep scrolling, compelled to seek that rewarding experience.

Dopamine and addiction

Dopamine was first linked to addiction in the 1970s when researchers found that rats would compulsively self-stimulate dopamine-related brain areas with electricity. 

Addiction was initially only thought of in the context of substance abuse. The level of dopamine in the brain increases in response to many addictive drugs, even those that don’t directly act on the dopaminergic system. 

This release in dopamine allows you to unconsciously learn an association between the behaviors and contexts that led to that pleasurable experience. Over repeated consumption, dopamine becomes associated with those behaviors, reinforcing the drug-seeking behavior, which becomes habitual.

It wasn’t until the 2010s that addiction was extended to include what is now known as behavioral addiction. In these disorders, dopamine increases also reinforce certain behaviors (like gambling, gaming, and shopping), making them habitual, even compulsive. 

Advertisement

Social stimuli, like smiling faces, messages, and possibly even likes and notifications, can activate our dopaminergic system. The link between dopamine and the passive consumption of social media content and compulsive scrolling has not been established. However, in mice, dopamine has been found to spontaneously increase during certain behavioral patterns – and those behaviors were then more likely to occur again and again. This shows that dopamine can reinforce any small behavior and make it habitual.

Addictions are also defined by their detrimental effects on mental and physical health – and on our perseverance in the behaviors despite the negative effects. Endless scrolling has been associated with worsening mental health (especially in teenagers), likening it to other addictive behaviors. 

Maybe it’s time to find our way out of the “trap”.

All “explainer” articles are confirmed by fact checkers to be correct at time of publishing. Text, images, and links may be edited, removed, or added to at a later date to keep information current.

Deborah Bloomfield
Deborah Bloomfield

Related posts:

  1. China vehicle sales slid 18% in August – industry body
  2. Fed’s Powell: Reopening economic bottlenecks could be “more enduring”
  3. The World’s Oldest Bottle Of Wine Might Actually Be Safe To Drink
  4. How Coffee Could Protect Against Alzheimer’s: Espresso Found To Inhibit Tau Proteins

Source Link: Caught In A "Dopamine Trap" – What Does That Mean?

Filed Under: News

Primary Sidebar

  • “Immediate, Sustained, And Devastating” Pain: The Most Venomous Mammal Packs An Extremely Nasty Sting
  • Domestic Cats Keeping Making Hybrids. That’s A Problem, And Yes – That Includes Some Pets
  • These Strange Little Lizards Have Toxic Green Blood, And No One Knows Exactly Why
  • How Does 2-In-1 Shampoo And Conditioner Work?
  • There Are 2-Billion-Year-Old “Millennium Rocks” In A Suburb, Hundreds Of Miles From Their Primeval Home
  • “That’s A Hellfire Missile Smacking Into That UFO”: Strange Video Emerges From US UAP Hearing
  • In 40,000 Years, Voyager 1 Will Have A Close Encounter With Gliese 445
  • Abnormally Long Gamma Ray Burst Unlike Anything We’ve Seen Before Baffles Astronomers
  • Critically Endangered Shark Meat Is Being Sold In US Stores For As Little As $2.99
  • Infectious Mouth Bacteria Lurking In Artery Plaques Could Be Behind Some Heart Attacks
  • What Would You Reach If You Kept Digging Under Antarctica?
  • First Visible Time Crystals Ever Made Have Astonishing Complexity And Practical Potential
  • “Something Undeniably Special”: The Chi Cygnids, A New Five-Yearly Meteor Shower, Peak This Month
  • A 200-Meter-Tall Event We Didn’t See Sent Signals Through The Earth For Nine Whole Days
  • Why Are So Many Volcanoes Underwater?
  • In 1977, A Hybrid Was Born In A Zoo. What It Taught Us Could Save One Of The Planet’s Most Endangered Species
  • How To Park A Dangerous Asteroid So It Doesn’t Bite You Later
  • New Study Finds Evidence For What Every Parent Knows About Bluey
  • New Breakthrough Takes Plastic Garbage And Turns It Into Tool For Carbon Capture
  • NASA To Hold Press Conference About New Perseverance Rover Discovery Tomorrow
  • Business
  • Health
  • News
  • Science
  • Technology
  • +1 718 874 1545
  • +91 78878 22626
  • [email protected]
Office Address
Prudour Pvt. Ltd. 420 Lexington Avenue Suite 300 New York City, NY 10170.

Powered by Prudour Network

Copyrights © 2025 · Medical Market Report. All Rights Reserved.

Go to mobile version