It was 11:30, just after breakfast. My friend walked by the pool of his hotel, and he saw a boy, maybe 10 years old. “This already-chubby kid was lying on a chair next to the pool, eating chips and ice cream at the same time, playing on his iPad. He had the time of his life, but”—and this phrase really struck me—”there’s an 80% chance he’ll never escape this effortless dopamine spiral from here on out.”
An effortless dopamine spiral. That’s what it is, isn’t it? A world full of convenient, near-free, always accessible distractions. Junk food. Youtube. Spotify. Web browsing. The news. Social media. Mobile games. The list is endless and, thanks to our smartphones, always at hand. That’s the perfidious part.
If we had to walk 40 minutes every time we wanted a pizza, we’d eat pizza a lot less. If every movie cost 20 euros to watch, we’d think twice about how many we’d put on. And if time online was still billed by the minute the way it was in the 90s, our browsing would be a lot more efficient.
But when you can access everything right away or order it to your doorstep, the rewards become meaningless because we no longer exert any effort to attain them. Now, the best we can do is enjoy them and not let them get to our head. At worst, we become addicted to cheap, fast, and easy. An effortless dopamine spiral.
“It’s remarkable how badly parents can destroy their children’s future when they’re still so young,” was my friend’s damning conclusion. Of course, the parents, too, are stuck in the spiral, and that’s part of the reason why they allow their kid to fall into it in the first place.
It’s a pernicious environment we’re in, but it’s on us to manage it. Enjoy your dopamine responsibly, and remember that, ultimately, nothing worth having is free.