Understanding Dopamine: The Neuroscience of Digital Engagement

The Chemistry of Reward #

Dopamine is a chemical in our brains associated with pleasure and reward. Rather than explaining it myself, I’ll share a quote from the book “The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion”, (pp. 102-103):

All animal brains are designed to create flashes of pleasure when the animal does something important for its survival, and small pulses of the neurotransmitter dopamine in the ventral striatum (and a few other places) are where these good feelings are manufactured. Heroin and cocaine are addictive because they artificially trigger this dopamine response. Rats who can press a button to deliver electrical stimulation to their reward centers will continue pressing until they collapse from starvation.

[Drew] Westen found that partisans escaping from handcuffs (by thinking about the final slide, which restored their confidence in their candidate) got a little hit of that dopamine. And if this is true, then it would explain why extreme partisans are so stubborn, closed-minded, and committed to beliefs that often seem bizarre or paranoid. Like rats that cannot stop pressing a button, partisans may be simply unable to stop believing weird things. The partisan brain has been reinforced so many times for performing mental contortions that free it from unwanted beliefs. Extreme partisanship may be literally addictive.

In the text above, the author is discussing why politically divided individuals get so passionate about politics. One suggestion, as the author notes, is that tribal signaling (what political arguments often represent) triggers a dopamine reward in the brain.

Tech Companies and Dopamine #

Modern apps like Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, Twitter, Reddit, HN, and similar platforms have been optimized to provide strong dopamine responses.

An example of this are notifications often in the form of a little red dot. Every time you see that red dot, you feel an urge to check your notifications, and you receive a dopamine reward in doing so. We’re Pavlov’s dog and notifications are a little treat.

You may be wondering: how did we arrive here? Was there a coordinated effort by product leaders at tech companies to build products that are physically engaging? The true answer—in most cases at least—is that no, there was no such deliberate strategy.

However, it can be said that the engaging nature of these apps is a natural consequence of how they were optimized. It happens that the same actions that increase engagement metrics correlate well with activities that trigger dopamine release in the brain.

The Evolution of Digital Products #

Through the use of A/B testing, we have gradually created products highly optimized for engagement.

The term engagement refers to keeping users actively interacting with the product. It’s also something that’s relatively easy to measure. You can measure engagement in terms of:

• How long do people spend using your product?
• How likely are people to continue using it?
• How many times does someone perform a particular action?

The process of optimizing for engagement is straightforward: create a hypothesis, determine what metric you are measuring to test the hypothesis, and conduct an experiment.

A simple example might be that you create a “pay now” button somewhere on a website’s checkout form, and test which color is more likely to get clicked. You show 50% of visitors a blue version of the button, and show the other 50% a red version of the same button. After the experiment runs for a while, you examine the results to see which button was more likely to be clicked, red or blue.

Repeat this process continuously and eventually you’ll have a product that’s highly optimized to trigger dopamine responses in the brain.

The Value Exchange #

The interesting aspect of these dopamine-rewarding apps is that they sometimes offer little tangible benefit beyond the dopamine response itself.

When you’re scrolling through Instagram liking friends’ posts and leaving comments, then waiting for reciprocal engagement, you’re not necessarily gaining economic value. Your Instagram activity might not lead to professional opportunities or significant recognition.

To Facebook, each user represents approximately $30 per year in revenue. That revenue stays entirely within the company rather than being distributed to users for their attention.

Even if they did share: would you be more likely to use Instagram if Facebook sent you a $30 check every year? Probably not. The dopamine response is often more valuable than that modest sum.

Mindful Digital Consumption #

It’s up to individuals to develop awareness around their digital habits. Most activities are likely fine in moderation.

To use an analogy, we might compare Instagram to sugar. Sugar triggers a rush of dopamine in the brain. It’s also associated with certain health concerns when consumed excessively. Therefore, it’s probably beneficial to moderate sugar consumption.

Similarly, being mindful about our digital consumption patterns can help us maintain a balanced relationship with technology. Just as we can enjoy occasional treats without making them dietary staples, we can engage with digital platforms while maintaining awareness of their design principles and our responses to them.

By understanding the neuroscience behind digital engagement, we can make more intentional choices about how we interact with technology in our daily lives.