Digital Drugs

We all must live with our devices. Unless we decide that we are going to completely stop participating in society we need our devices and the applications that come along with them. These innovations in digital technology have made a lot of things much easier and more convenient. I often refer to my phone as my surrogate brain. It holds all the thoughts, ideas and memories that my actual brain doesn’t have the capacity to hold efficiently.

I make this point about the necessity of our modern smart devices because that makes the existence of digital drugs so dangerous. The term digital drug was coined by Stanford psychiatrist Dr. Anne Lembke. She specializes in addiction and recently released a book called ‘Dopamine Nation: Finding Balance in the Age of Indulgence’. She uses the term ‘digital drugs’ to refer to the device applications that provide that dopamine hit and thus have an addictive quality.

These application’s creators did not stumble accidentally upon this dopamine reward system. It is intentionally a component of these digital products. Unlike other drugs these digital drugs are located right next to the parts of our digital lives that we use daily to conduct business, keep in touch with loved ones, pay our bills, navigate us to our destinations, and publish our rants in the public space.

A few days ago the screen on my phone wouldn’t respond to my touch – essentially making the phone useless. I couldn’t even slide to turn it off and restart it. This happened right as I got home from work. A sort-of panic set in as I went to reach for my phone multiple times over the next hour only to embarrassingly remember that the phone was inoperable. I didn’t have access to my recipes so I dumbed down dinner. I didn’t have access to my music or podcasts so I made dinner in silence. I didn’t have access to my email so I couldn’t respond to the client emails that had accumulated through the day. I even had to use my wife’s phone to find the our service provider’s closest store and their hours. Then as I was heading out the door to try to catch them before they closed I had to retain the directions in my head as opposed to simply hitting ‘directions to’.

The issue was resolved, and I didn’t have to go for very long without a phone. It was more a lesson in how absolutely reliant we are on the devices that have become our constant companions. Again, these devices make life much easier in many ways. They are with us now and likely will be forever. If you are a student, professional, or just want to stay up with the times then a smart device is necessary. That is what makes the problem of digital drugs so dangerous.

If one had a dependency on a chemical drug such as nicotine or alcohol then there is a way to separate that from the rest of our lives. One does not need either of those things for survival. Dr. Lembke uses the analogy of food addiction as a good metaphor for unhealthy relationships with the digital drugs on our smart devices. We need food to survive so unlike nicotine, alcohol, or other chemical drugs we can’t simply cut it out of our lives. We must eat to survive so those with food addictions must find ways to manage their addiction without completely eliminating the source of their addiction from their lives.

This is true of the digital drugs. Whether we like it or not these devices are going to be with us. Sure you can choose not to use them at all and try to reactivate the Motorola Razor that is in the bottom of your junk drawer, but the reality is that very few of us can, or would want to, give up the conveniences of our smart devices. So we need to learn how to manage our use of the apps, games, and social media platforms that have those addictive properties.

I suppose the most important piece of information one can have when confronting overuse of any of these digital drugs is a solid understanding of how they are engaging us. Most of these digital drugs rely on a dopamine release in their users. They achieve this release by predicting with very precise accuracy what type of content will keep you engaged and release that happy serum into our brain.

The reason these algorithms can so precisely predict your desires is because almost every interaction you’ve had with a screen has been stored and recorded. Our online habits are well documented. Our data has been mined, analyzed, and shared. It is likely that our most used apps and platforms know more about us than we know about ourselves. Especially when we consider that they have very powerful computers and complex algorithms analyzing that data. They then use that analysis to decide which content is most likely to keep us on their app, site, or platform.

Another useful perspective in managing the use of these digital drugs is the reality that they aren’t there for any reason other than to make advertising money from your attention. These companies may say their goal is to keep you informed, connected, entertained, or ‘to make the world a better place’(geez). In reality their goal is singular. It is to maximize profits, and they do that by maximizing the engagement of their users, and they do that with little regard for anything else.

It is important to know how these things work. I think currently that is the only real weapon the general public has against the massive tech companies that are vying for our attention and dollars. To this point there seems to be little desire from any legislative body to try to reel this in here in the US. These digital drugs are still quite new and the producers and users are still in the beginning phase of understanding how they work and what their long-term affects will be. Let’s be proactive in at least attempting to understand the manipulative qualities of these products. We have the control to limit our use of any app, game, or platform. But first we must be able to recognize what of our digital lives is necessary and what is unhealthy. If this piece does nothing other than raise that question then it is a success.

I appreciate your attention and hope you’ve found value in this.
Thanks for reading.

Dr. Lembke has other very interesting insights on the physiology of addiction and how pleasure and pain operate. I suggest looking further into her if any of that interests you. She has many published works and an extensive amount of informative content on YouTube.