in 2005 an 18 year old version of the
teacher you see before he was
heartbroken my high school lacrosse team
the Fighting aardvarks of Oregon
Episcopal School yes that was a real
mascot had advanced to the state
championship game but after a
hard-fought contest we had lost
I went home completely dejected but
later that day something happened that
changed everything I got a notification
that I could finally join facebook I got
my college email account and that meant
that I could start a profile I could
start connecting with people I’d be
going to school with later in the year a
real world disappointment melted in the
face of the warm embrace of the digital
world now this is a long way of saying
that I’m millennial I grew up with the
internet but I only came to have it in
my pocket and always available a little
bit later in life but I also worked with
teenagers and teenagers have never not
had this technology never not had this
option to escape at a moment’s notice if
they feel like it and sometimes I think
what is this having an effect on our
brains now our title of the talk to
bring ourselves to the title to talk our
smartphones ruining us forever
probably not people have been angry at
things that teenagers have been doing
that are new ever since teenagers have
been a thing I think of it like a grumpy
man yelling at kids and telling him to
get off his lawn before smartphones it
was the internet before the internet it
was TV before TV it was comic books so
this talk isn’t can be about that but
and there is a but we’re all dealing in
a new environment where we all have
these devices that connect us with each
other available at all times and
sometimes I wonder what the long-term
effects of this are going to be okay so
at the end of this talk my hope is that
we’ll have thought a little
more deeply about what affects this
technology is going to have on us and
how we use it in our day-to-day lives so
I want you to imagine a scary scenario
imagine it last night while you are
asleep a mad scientist sneaks into your
room and implants a small chip just
behind your ear okay
you wake up you wake up and nothing it
seems like nothing has changed but
something really fundamental about your
brain is different you see this isn’t
just any mad scientist he’s an employee
he works for let’s say the shrine Hart
family sausage company and every time
you catch a glimpse of a delicious
sheinhardt family sausage you start to
feel good really good
you get wake up you go to the
refrigerator you see the packaging and
before you even know it you’re opening
the package popping in the microwave and
every step of the way feeling like
you’re on the verge of something awesome
now this chip stimulates the dopamine
center in your brain dopamine is a
neurotransmitter it’s something that is
in your brain that does something very
very special now in 1953 two scientists
named olds and Milner did something to
rats it’s like what we just talked about
with the mad scientist and the sausages
what they did was they realized that if
they zapped a specific part of a rat’s
brain with a small dose of electricity
they could get the rat to do pretty much
anything they wanted if it was moving to
another side of the cage the rat would
do it if it was pressing a button with
its little rat claws the rat would do it
if it was completely avoiding food
ultimately starving to death the rat
would do it now they thought they had
found the happiness center of the brain
but they hadn’t they found the reward
center now that might seem like a small
distinction but when you hear about what
happened when they started with human
subjects
you’re going to start to see how this
can change the architecture of your
brain you see dopamine is the chemical
that leads you towards a goal but when
they started doing this with human
subjects I want you to imagine what it
must have been like to be one of these
test subjects
imagine that the scientists put an
electrode in your brain and give you a
control panel with a button on it that
allows you to self stimulate this newly
discovered reward center this dopamine
Center how often do you think you would
press that button a couple times a day a
couple times an hour a couple times a
minute on average test subjects press
that button once every second they
pressed it over and over and over
furiously even when the electricity to
the box had completely cut off and it
didn’t do anything but they didn’t
describe a sense of happiness no they
described it more in terms of anxiety
exhaustion fear of what might happen if
this button was ever taken away
you see dopamine doesn’t isn’t a
happiness drug it’s a reward drug it
rewards you for taking action towards
something but you never quite get there
a dopamine high is the feeling that
something great is just around the
corner but you’re never quite there does
that remind you of anything
maybe scrolling through an image feed or
nine out of ten of the post you see or
boring you’ve seen them before but you
get that little flash of hope whenever
the next cool thing might be there I
hear from a lot of people I can’t give
up my smart phone my smart phone makes
me happy I’m here to tell you that is
unequivocally not the case your smart
phone makes you think you are about to
be happy and that’s an important
difference okay we have lived in we now
live in an environment that is
completely different from the one that
we evolved for
we spent the vast majority of our
evolutionary history on the plains of
Africa in small tight-knit groups
hunting and gathering and looking for
whatever food we could now this crafted
us for certain drives right we looked
for food that was high-fat high-sugar
because that’s where most the energy was
whenever we saw tracks on the ground of
some prey animal we were trying to hunt
our dopamine centers would light up
because we knew we were on the path to
getting that reward now fast-forward to
today and you have this kind of
fast-food high-fat high-sugar fruit
available everywhere and the rise in
obesity and heart disease is the result
something that used to be rare and
valuable has become cheap and abundant
the same thing has happened with
connection to the internet and social
media we evolved to crave things like
connection with each other novelty
outrage because these things helped us
survive long long ago and it’s the same
thing with social media now we have
these feelings or at least some
temporary imitation of them at the press
of a button in the same way that
fast-food companies compete to deliver
to us the most dopamine stimulating
images of most delicious-looking food we
have tech companies that are competing
to try to stimulate our dopamine centers
as much as they possibly can this is an
experiment and we’re just at the
beginning of it and we don’t know what
the ultimate effects are going to be now
remember the good news that this
generation probably isn’t more messed up
than any other generation it’s come
before here’s the bad news teens today
are in a rough spot mentally ever since
2012 when smartphones became more common
than less common anxiety has been going
up depression has been going up rates of
suicide going up and the amount of time
that you spend on in screen interactions
instead of face-to-face interactions has
been going up too
the more time you spend with the screen
over an hour per day the less happy you
tend to be now scientists can’t prove
that screen time directly causes these
negative outcomes but I’m willing to bet
that there is a connection because we
live in a world today where if you don’t
like what’s in front of you if you find
it too boring too stressful or just not
what you want to see each of us adults
students teens everyone is one second
two seconds three from escaping and
that’s a problem I think now this might
be a fluke
this rise in anxiety and depression and
so on might have nothing to do with the
fact that we have high-speed computers
in our pockets that allow us at a
moment’s notice to escape the real world
but I’d be willing to bet that there’s
some kind of connection there now what
recommendation do I have what is the
takeaway from this basically to everyone
in the audience adults students myself
because I’m guilty of this as well
here’s what I would say don’t be a
dopamine rat slow down when you get the
urge to check a notification stroll
through an image feed look for something
new take a break
ask yourself what am I looking for
am i trying to escape am i chasing that
dopamine high even though I know it’s
ultimately endless I’ll never stop think
about what you feel in your body in your
brain when you’re scrolling through
snapchat or Instagram or if your old Facebook thank you
teacher you see before he was
heartbroken my high school lacrosse team
the Fighting aardvarks of Oregon
Episcopal School yes that was a real
mascot had advanced to the state
championship game but after a
hard-fought contest we had lost
I went home completely dejected but
later that day something happened that
changed everything I got a notification
that I could finally join facebook I got
my college email account and that meant
that I could start a profile I could
start connecting with people I’d be
going to school with later in the year a
real world disappointment melted in the
face of the warm embrace of the digital
world now this is a long way of saying
that I’m millennial I grew up with the
internet but I only came to have it in
my pocket and always available a little
bit later in life but I also worked with
teenagers and teenagers have never not
had this technology never not had this
option to escape at a moment’s notice if
they feel like it and sometimes I think
what is this having an effect on our
brains now our title of the talk to
bring ourselves to the title to talk our
smartphones ruining us forever
probably not people have been angry at
things that teenagers have been doing
that are new ever since teenagers have
been a thing I think of it like a grumpy
man yelling at kids and telling him to
get off his lawn before smartphones it
was the internet before the internet it
was TV before TV it was comic books so
this talk isn’t can be about that but
and there is a but we’re all dealing in
a new environment where we all have
these devices that connect us with each
other available at all times and
sometimes I wonder what the long-term
effects of this are going to be okay so
at the end of this talk my hope is that
we’ll have thought a little
more deeply about what affects this
technology is going to have on us and
how we use it in our day-to-day lives so
I want you to imagine a scary scenario
imagine it last night while you are
asleep a mad scientist sneaks into your
room and implants a small chip just
behind your ear okay
you wake up you wake up and nothing it
seems like nothing has changed but
something really fundamental about your
brain is different you see this isn’t
just any mad scientist he’s an employee
he works for let’s say the shrine Hart
family sausage company and every time
you catch a glimpse of a delicious
sheinhardt family sausage you start to
feel good really good
you get wake up you go to the
refrigerator you see the packaging and
before you even know it you’re opening
the package popping in the microwave and
every step of the way feeling like
you’re on the verge of something awesome
now this chip stimulates the dopamine
center in your brain dopamine is a
neurotransmitter it’s something that is
in your brain that does something very
very special now in 1953 two scientists
named olds and Milner did something to
rats it’s like what we just talked about
with the mad scientist and the sausages
what they did was they realized that if
they zapped a specific part of a rat’s
brain with a small dose of electricity
they could get the rat to do pretty much
anything they wanted if it was moving to
another side of the cage the rat would
do it if it was pressing a button with
its little rat claws the rat would do it
if it was completely avoiding food
ultimately starving to death the rat
would do it now they thought they had
found the happiness center of the brain
but they hadn’t they found the reward
center now that might seem like a small
distinction but when you hear about what
happened when they started with human
subjects
you’re going to start to see how this
can change the architecture of your
brain you see dopamine is the chemical
that leads you towards a goal but when
they started doing this with human
subjects I want you to imagine what it
must have been like to be one of these
test subjects
imagine that the scientists put an
electrode in your brain and give you a
control panel with a button on it that
allows you to self stimulate this newly
discovered reward center this dopamine
Center how often do you think you would
press that button a couple times a day a
couple times an hour a couple times a
minute on average test subjects press
that button once every second they
pressed it over and over and over
furiously even when the electricity to
the box had completely cut off and it
didn’t do anything but they didn’t
describe a sense of happiness no they
described it more in terms of anxiety
exhaustion fear of what might happen if
this button was ever taken away
you see dopamine doesn’t isn’t a
happiness drug it’s a reward drug it
rewards you for taking action towards
something but you never quite get there
a dopamine high is the feeling that
something great is just around the
corner but you’re never quite there does
that remind you of anything
maybe scrolling through an image feed or
nine out of ten of the post you see or
boring you’ve seen them before but you
get that little flash of hope whenever
the next cool thing might be there I
hear from a lot of people I can’t give
up my smart phone my smart phone makes
me happy I’m here to tell you that is
unequivocally not the case your smart
phone makes you think you are about to
be happy and that’s an important
difference okay we have lived in we now
live in an environment that is
completely different from the one that
we evolved for
we spent the vast majority of our
evolutionary history on the plains of
Africa in small tight-knit groups
hunting and gathering and looking for
whatever food we could now this crafted
us for certain drives right we looked
for food that was high-fat high-sugar
because that’s where most the energy was
whenever we saw tracks on the ground of
some prey animal we were trying to hunt
our dopamine centers would light up
because we knew we were on the path to
getting that reward now fast-forward to
today and you have this kind of
fast-food high-fat high-sugar fruit
available everywhere and the rise in
obesity and heart disease is the result
something that used to be rare and
valuable has become cheap and abundant
the same thing has happened with
connection to the internet and social
media we evolved to crave things like
connection with each other novelty
outrage because these things helped us
survive long long ago and it’s the same
thing with social media now we have
these feelings or at least some
temporary imitation of them at the press
of a button in the same way that
fast-food companies compete to deliver
to us the most dopamine stimulating
images of most delicious-looking food we
have tech companies that are competing
to try to stimulate our dopamine centers
as much as they possibly can this is an
experiment and we’re just at the
beginning of it and we don’t know what
the ultimate effects are going to be now
remember the good news that this
generation probably isn’t more messed up
than any other generation it’s come
before here’s the bad news teens today
are in a rough spot mentally ever since
2012 when smartphones became more common
than less common anxiety has been going
up depression has been going up rates of
suicide going up and the amount of time
that you spend on in screen interactions
instead of face-to-face interactions has
been going up too
the more time you spend with the screen
over an hour per day the less happy you
tend to be now scientists can’t prove
that screen time directly causes these
negative outcomes but I’m willing to bet
that there is a connection because we
live in a world today where if you don’t
like what’s in front of you if you find
it too boring too stressful or just not
what you want to see each of us adults
students teens everyone is one second
two seconds three from escaping and
that’s a problem I think now this might
be a fluke
this rise in anxiety and depression and
so on might have nothing to do with the
fact that we have high-speed computers
in our pockets that allow us at a
moment’s notice to escape the real world
but I’d be willing to bet that there’s
some kind of connection there now what
recommendation do I have what is the
takeaway from this basically to everyone
in the audience adults students myself
because I’m guilty of this as well
here’s what I would say don’t be a
dopamine rat slow down when you get the
urge to check a notification stroll
through an image feed look for something
new take a break
ask yourself what am I looking for
am i trying to escape am i chasing that
dopamine high even though I know it’s
ultimately endless I’ll never stop think
about what you feel in your body in your
brain when you’re scrolling through
snapchat or Instagram or if your old Facebook thank you
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