Dopamine Junkies

Recent event before the lockdown. Met a youngster, excited to meet me and I asked what are you doing nowadays and what are your goals. Youngster replied, why should I have goals, I have a YouTube channel and people follow me. Curious I asked what is on your channel, youngster replied I share my random thoughts from day to day and my follower count is so much..

Something didn’t sound right. I tried to analyse and concluded , That in current era, We are used to hyper-palatable foods and drinks, and we can get games and gadgets whenever we want them. The problem: with this type of pleasure-maximizing choice behaviour we may be turning ourselves into mindless pleasure junkies, handing over our free will for the next dopamine shoot. Pleasure-only activities are fun. In excess, however, such activities might have negative effects on our biopsychological health: they provoke a change in the neural mechanisms underlying choice behaviour. Choice behaviour becomes biased towards short-term pleasure-maximizing goals, just as in the addicted brain (modulated by amygdala) and away from long-term prosperity and general well-being maximizing objectives (normally ensured by the insula)

People are liking my video , my subscriber count is increasing is just a dopamine shot, nothing more than that and long term goals and purpose in life are far bigger drivers of success and successful youngsters mean better economy and prosperous country.

Youngster continued ,I am an influencer for some brand. Yes, do you use that brand , answer no. I am not interested. I was even more worried.

Youngster continued further , I get commission on the sales that I recommend and my final hope for the future is gone , we have lost the makers, innovators, intellectuals , hard workers to commission seekers , meaningless , morally hollow influencers high on dopamine shot of subscribers numbers and likes as savings.

We are at risk of having a world full of meaningless influencers and confused followers following, but I have my own doubts if they have any attention span left.