According to a doctor of psychology, having fun on smartphones and social networks alone could make you addicted. Nothing new, except that we are talking about an addiction to dopamine, known to be a neurotransmitter responsible for the feeling of pleasure.
According to his LinkedIn page, Cameron Sepah holds a doctorate in psychology. The latter offers its services to business leaders in order to be more efficient with less stress. The interested party published an article on August 7, 2019 to explain how the reward circuit behaves with the use of smartphones.
Cameron Sepah claims that the consumption of social networks and smartphones in general causes dopamine addiction . However, the increase in the time devoted to this kind of activity would ultimately make us less and less sensitive to this pleasure hormone. In other words, excessive use of laptops and social networks could "blase" users.
Simply advocates dopamine fasting ordopamine fasting in English. According to an article published by Business Insider on October 3, 2019, Cameron Sepah regrets, however, that his statements were misinterpreted. Indeed, various publications on the networks estimate, among other things, that the dopamine levels of individuals would be higher than a certain norm and that it could be very dangerous.
The doctor of psychology actually wanted to point the finger at excessive consumption networks and smartphones by part of the population of the United States. Indeed, some users spend more than 10 hours a day clinging to their cellphones, feeding off a lot of "fast entertainment". However, it would be this need to be entertained quickly that would make individuals less sensitive to dopamine . Besides, the resulting effects would not be very welcome:loss of concentration and attention, control of stimuli, etc.
To support his argument, the interested party drew a comparison with dopaminergic drugs such as cocaine and methamphetamine. These act on dopamine receptors like a key opening a lock and over time downregulate these receptors. However, it is precisely this negative regulation that would cause this loss of sensitivity to dopamine. It should be noted in passing that in January 2019, a study conducted by a team from Michigan State University concluded that the excessive use of social networks is comparable to drug addiction.
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