The warm wave of satisfaction that accompanies helping a friend has much in common with the burst of pleasure delivered each time an Instagram post receives another “like.” Both are genuine human reactions to forms of achievement. Both begin with the release of a hormone produced in the brain—oxytocin in the former case, dopamine in the latter—that not only triggers a range of immediate emotional responses, but also shapes neural pathways that influence future behavior.
The difference is in the influence—in effect, what the brain learns from the experience. Oxytocin, released with real-life interactions, eye-contact, and physical touch, bonds humans together. It bonds husband and wife, mother and child, friend and friend. It establishes mutual love, trust, and responsibility.
Dopamine leaves behind only a craving for more. The brain gets the pleasure, but not any lasting satisfaction or fulfillment. Biologically, dopamine’s role is to reinforce pleasurable behaviors and experiences necessary to human survival, like food and sex, to ensure their constant pursuit. But when dopamine becomes divorced from true biological needs, the dopamine itself becomes the powerful need, turning people into addicts. Substances are more addictive when exposure to them releases more dopamine more quickly into the brain. Indeed, researchers use measurements of dopamine levels to quantify a behavior or drug’s addictive power.
Big Tech designs its digital technology to exploit our neurological vulnerabilities.
This brief narrative is oversimplified in various ways, but its core truth poses a fascinating theoretical challenge for market fundamentalists whose worldview requires an assumption of individuals capable of rationally maximizing their own utility, and an urgent practical challenge for policymakers and parents who want to protect children online. As former engineers have explained, and current executives implicitly acknowledge when they keep their own kids away from their own wares, Big Tech designs its digital technology to exploit our neurological vulnerabilities.
