Addiction happens in the brain. It looks like it’s happening on the outside, in the insertion of a needle into an arm, in the glazed-over eyes of the Internet addict who hasn’t left the screen for thirty-six hours. However, the behavior is just the tip of the iceberg; the addiction is going on between the ears. Therefore, in order to understand what makes the Internet so addictive, we have to understand a little bit about the human brain.
Brain imaging studies have emerged in the past few decades, leading to an increasingly more in-depth understanding of the way that our brain works and of what addiction looks like in the brain. It is important to note, before delving into the research, though, that for all that we now know about the human brain, there is still so much to learn. The technology for brain study is new, plus Internet technology is new and changing, so we simply don’t have the information that we need to be able to accurately say exactly what the long-term effects are on the brain with regard to daily use of Internet devices. That said, we do have a good idea about the initial effects and the relationship of Internet activity to behavioral addiction within the brain. We have early studies, and we are learning more and more each year.
One of the most powerful things that research has uncovered so far is that if you look at the brain scans of people addicted to technology, and you compare those with the brain scans of people addicted to drugs, you will be unable to tell a difference. The addiction looks the same in the brain regardless of the substance or behavior. This has led some neuroscientists and other professionals to use terms for the Internet such as “electronic heroin” or “electronic cocaine.” This underlines the fact that despite contradictory arguments about whether or not Internet addiction is “real” or “problematic,” brain research strongly shows that you can indeed get addicted to the Internet.
The brain is a complex thing, and it takes years of study to really get a grasp on how it works. So, we’re only going to examine parts of it as they relate specifically to addiction. In doing so, we have to begin with the neurotransmitters. These are basically the communicators, or messengers, in the brain. They transmit information from one part to another, often from neuron to neuron. This information is critical to our survival; it tells the brain to perform certain important tasks such as eating and sleeping. Addictive behavior manipulates these neurotransmitters, causing disruption in the brain. You might not care so much about eating or sleeping because your brain isn’t communicating the importance of that anymore. It’s been hijacked by the drug. The drug could be the Internet.
Dopamine is perhaps the most important neurotransmitter at play when it comes to Internet addiction. It plays a really critical role in Internet usage in general and Internet addiction specifically. Dopamine is a natural drug in the brain, often called “the feel good chemical.” Whenever we experience something that feels good, the brain releases dopamine. That dopamine goes directly to the nucleus accumbens, a cluster of nerve cells often called the “brain’s pleasure center.” These neurotransmitters communicate, “Ah, yes, that feels great.” Here’s basically what happens:
Dopamine itself is a bit addictive; we always want to feel good, so the more dopamine we get, the more we want to have. The brain is always seeking out things that will give it a dopamine release. The more dopamine we get from an activity, the more likely it is that the activity will become addictive. If you know that something feels good, you are going to keep going back to that same activity to try to get that food feeling.
One of the things that the brain especially loves is the feeling of novelty. Our brains are wired to take pleasure in new, unexpected things. When we experience something new, particularly something that feels especially good, our brains surge with dopamine. Therefore, we seek out novelty. The brain’s reward center activates when we hit the jackpot by finding that novel thing. This relates to addiction generally in that people will constantly seek out new, better, more interesting triggers for that feel-good dopamine release. It relates specifically to Internet addiction because the Internet offers constant potential for something new. With just a quick click of the mouse, you can see something that you have never seen before. The Internet is designed to offer instant gratification, which is exactly what the brain loves—give me more of that dopamine, and give it to me now!
Research has found that intermittent rewards are much more satisfying to the brain than rewards delivered on a regular schedule. Think about it; if you know that every fifth bite of food will taste amazing, then your brain will habituate to that. You’ll tune out to the first four bites and feel mildly excited by bite five. However, if you have no idea which bite of food is the one that will taste good, then you’ll always be hopeful for it, and when that exciting flavor does hit your mouth, it will be that much more exciting. Now apply that to the Internet; you never really know whether the next web link, article, cat video, or social media post will be the one that excites your brain. That itself makes the search for something pleasurable even more enjoyable to the brain. That enjoyment is so addictive. Remember a few years back when the Shiba Inu Puppy Cam was all the rage? You could tune in day or night and peek in real time at what the growing puppies were doing. Often, they weren’t doing anything. Sometimes they weren’t even on the screen. But every now and then you’d tune in, and they’d be there acting super adorable and, you would feel great. You’d keep coming back.
We see intermittent rewards (also called a variable-ratio reward schedule) in online video games. Even a game as simple as Minecraft, which has a lower potential for addiction than real-time strategy games, offers the dopamine high of intermittent rewards. In the game, you attempt to find gold, but there is a moment right before your virtual pickaxe strikes down when you don’t know whether or not the gold will be there. When it is, you feel great, and dopamine releases. If it’s not there, you have that much stronger of an urge to try again. You were almost about to get that great dopamine surge, and then it didn’t happen. Why would you stop now?!
Nicholas Kardaras calls that hit of dopamine a “brain orgasm.” He has found through studies of brain imaging that Internet behaviors are as capable of stimulating the pleasure center as sexual activity is. This is potentially more dangerous than it seems at first glance. To understand, we have to look at evolution. Back in a time when we had to forage for our food, the brain released dopamine when we found and ate that food so that dopamine pleasure spike was really a key part of our survival. We wanted to feel good again, which motivated us to go out and look for more food. Therefore, natural dopamine is tied up with the circuits in the brain that relate to food, to sex, and essentially to survival.
Of course, most of us don’t have to forage for our food today. We get instant gratification rewards all day long from various stimuli including the Internet. However, this confuses the body. Dopamine is naturally highest in the body when we seek food, sex, and safety. Therefore, when dopamine levels are high, the body thinks that is what is happening. The brain’s reward system gets confused, actually beginning to believe that the behaviors (such as Internet searching or online gaming) are crucial to survival. The more frequently we indulge in the behavior, the longer those dopamine levels stay elevated and the more confused the body gets. The brain knows that it wants to feel good, and it knows that the addictive drug or behavior makes it feel that way. It thinks you will die without it.
This has the potential to increase addiction because cravings continue to intensify despite constantly elevated levels of dopamine. Moreover, it is possible that the dopamine we get from natural sources (like food and sex) can get dulled. We are so used to the dopamine high from technology that this “regular” dopamine doesn’t feel good enough. Therefore, we seek more and more dopamine through technology in order to keep feeling good. It is as if we were going in there and tinkering with our brains, telling the brain that food and sex aren’t that important to survival anymore, but the Internet is. Pause for a moment, and think about the consequences of that for the entire species, let alone the individual.
There are four different dopamine pathways in the brain, three of which relate to different aspects of reward. The mesocortical pathway is linked with cognitive and emotional abilities as well as memory, attention, and our ability to learn. The nigrostriatal pathway is all about movement and sensory stimulation. And the mesolimbic pathway is the pleasure-seeking and reward-desiring section. The latter is the one most associated with addiction. However, all of these areas may be affected by changes in dopamine levels.
If you’re having trouble following this, Kevin Roberts gives a great analogy, describing the brain like a complicated highway system. He writes, “Addiction floods some roads with increased traffic, while allowing other roads to fall into disuse and disrepair.” The pathways are different highways in this system, and the desire to get the reward is so strong that your brain will try different pathways to get there. The neurotransmitters, including dopamine, are the cars that you take to get from one place to another. You are on a highway to pleasure, and you’re driving your car as fast and wildly as you can to get there.
Dopamine is only one of several important neurotransmitters in the brain. You have probably also heard of serotonin. People with depression often have chemical imbalances particularly in terms of the serotonin levels. Serotonin is your brain’s biggest mood stabilizer. It also plays a role in your systems for sleep, food, and sexual desire.
Much of the research into the neurochemistry of addiction has focused on dopamine, so we currently have less understanding about the way that addiction relates to serotonin and some of the other transmitters. One thing we do know for sure is that the nucleus accumbens (that pleasure center in the brain) consists of two of the major neurotransmitters: dopamine and serotonin. Therefore, we can guess that when addiction messes with that reward center in the brain, it includes serotonin effects. We also know that serotonin is directly linked to our mood, so some of the consequences of Internet addiction discussed in the previous chapter (depression, irritability, etc.) may be linked with serotonin changes in the brain caused by the additive behavior.
Here’s something else that’s interesting: if serotonin is low, then the effects of dopamine motivation are greater. In other words, if you have low serotonin, then you’re more likely to seek out the things that give you a feel-good hit of dopamine. This makes sense; low serotonin means feeling depressed or low in mood, and you don’t want to feel that way, so your brain makes up for it by seeking out that dopamine hit. The reason this is important is because whether or not the Internet affects serotonin levels, we do know from early research that people who start out with low serotonin are more at risk of developing Internet addiction. They’re more motivated than others to seek the dopamine hit that the Internet may provide.
One study published in the 2011 issue of Neuropsychopharmacology explored the role of serotonin in gambling addiction, which we know is a behavioral addiction similar to Internet addiction. The study looked specifically at “loss chasing,” which refers to the gambler’s addicted behavior to try to cover their losses by gambling even more. They found that there was a relationship between serotonin and the willingness to loss chase, noting specifically that serotonin plays a complex, little-understood role, in impulse control not the least of which is that it plays a part in mediating how we learn about negative events. So, if serotonin is off, then we don’t make the best choices about things that are affecting us negatively. Combine that with seeking the dopamine hit, and the whole system is primed for addiction.
Another neurotransmitter that’s been linked with potential Internet addiction harm is gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA). Among other things, GABA communicates to help control vision and motor function. More important, it plays a crucial role in inhibiting neuron activity in order to reduce stress and increase relaxation, which in turn can lead to a more balanced mood, better sleep, and even pain relief. In order to feel “right,” you need to have the right GABA activity. Research indicates that Internet use messes with that.
A small study presented by Hyung Suk Seo, MD, professor of neuroradiology at Korea University, found that people diagnosed with Internet addiction had more GABA activity than those without addiction. This further means that GABA levels were off in terms of the ratio to other activity in the brain. Increased GABA can lead to problems with both cognitive and emotional processing, as well as to addiction side effects such as fatigue and anxiety.
Finally, let’s talk about norepinephrine. This neurotransmitter plays a role that’s similar to adrenaline, activating the body’s “fight, flight, or freeze” response. When your body thinks that it’s in danger, you experience changes in heart rate, breathing, body temperature, and your ability to process sensory stimuli. This can affect your movement (thus, you fight or flee or sometimes freeze). It can also affect your mood, sleep, appetite, and so forth. Basically, your body goes into a state of focusing entirely on getting to safety, so it doesn’t care as much about those other things.
There’s an interesting history when it comes to the research around norepinephrine and addiction. Back in the 1960s and 1970s, researchers were sure that it played a key role in addiction. However, those early experiments were limited, and researchers couldn’t quite tell whether it was norepinephrine or dopamine at play. By the 1980s, almost all of the research began to focus on dopamine. That is why we have so much information today about the role that dopamine plays in addiction but much less information about the role of the other neurotransmitters including norepinephrine.
More recent studies are beginning to try to fill in this gap, and they do indicate that norepinephrine is worth studying if we want to know more about addiction. They’re also shedding more light on the original confusing studies between norepinephrine and dopamine. The truth is, although we are learning more and more about the roles of each individual neurotransmitter, the brain exists as a thing in its entirety. It’s not just the individual parts that matter but also the way that those parts interact with one another. Some of the dopamine pathways, including the mesolimbic pathway, are modulated in part by norepinephrine. If one part gets affected, then so do the other parts. So, although we don’t have all of the answers, we do know that addiction happens in the brain, and within the brain it happens in large part among the communication systems of which the neurotransmitters play the biggest role. And studies indicate that the Internet is messing with the brain. To what degree and whether this is good, bad, or neutral is up for debate, and perhaps only time will tell.
If you look at physical models of the brain, then you will see that it contains four paired lobes (one in the right hemisphere and one in the left): occipital, temporal, parietal, and frontal. Each lobe is responsible for certain body functions. For example, the occipital lobe relates to vision. The frontal lobe is responsible for voluntary movement and cognitive functions. This is the part of the brain that helps us with “higher-level” functioning such as problem-solving, planning, and regulating our emotions. Our memories and personality are formed here. It also plays a part in the actions we choose, such as running, and in managing attention including selective attention abilities (what to pay attention to and what to ignore).
The frontal lobe, as the name suggests, is located at the front of the brain. And right at the front of the frontal lobe is the prefrontal cortex. The human brain develops back to front, so this is the last part of the brain to fully develop. And it’s the most complex part of the human brain in terms of allowing us adults to do the things that other mammals—or even children—can’t quite grasp. Attention, planning, prioritizing, impulse control behavior, emotional control, and adjusting to complicated and varying situations are all things that we are able to do thanks to the prefrontal cortex.
Brain injuries often affect the prefrontal cortex. They can change a person’s ability to perform executive functions, so someone who could normally plan things very well and stay organized can’t do so anymore after a traumatic brain injury. They may get emotionally dysregulated, have trouble controlling themselves, and even experience complete personality changes. Clearly, this is an important part of the brain.
Like so much else when it comes to Internet addiction, it’s hard to tell cause and effect here. Research indicates that people who have problems in their prefrontal cortex are more likely to be at risk for Internet addiction. Other research has found that regular, ongoing addictive behavior has a negative impact on the brain, inhibiting the abilities of the prefrontal cortex. This part of the brain may literally shrink with addictive Internet use. Since this is the part of the brain that regulates impulse control, the more damaged it gets, the less able we are to make logical, long-term solutions. In other words, addiction begets more addictive behavior; you can’t choose the actions that end addiction when your brain is wired to respond to impulsive drives that get triggered in addiction.
Did you catch what we said there just a few sentences ago? It bears repeating: this part of the brain may literally shrink with addictive Internet use. Multiple studies have found that the brain actually shrinks, possibly as much as 20 percent, losing more and more area with longer duration of the addiction. We lose parts of our brain when we engage in addictive Internet behavior. The frontal lobe decreases in size. Studies have also found brain shrinkage in the striatum and the insula, areas related to appropriate social behavior and developing empathy and compassion. People with Internet addiction are literally losing their minds in ways that affect their ability to participate healthily in our society. Notably, the studies into this are young, and there’s some debate about them within the scientific community. However, enough information has been released that a large percentage of reputable researchers believe that Internet addiction can lead to brain shrinkage.
When we talk about parts of the brain like the prefrontal cortex, we’re talking about gray matter. When we talk about the brain shrinking due to Internet addiction, it’s the gray matter that shrinks. But the brain consists of both gray matter and white matter, and both may be affected by Internet addiction. The gray matter is the bulk of what we see when we look at a human brain—the wrinkled, pinkish-gray tissue consisting of cell bodies, dendrites, and nerve synapses. But these gray matter tissues are connected by bundles of axons called white matter. White matter exists in the brain and the spinal cord; although there’s some gray matter in the spinal cord, it’s mostly white matter there.
One important thing to know about when it comes to white matter is the role of myelin, an insulating layer that wraps around the white matter. It’s a protective part of the body. Among other functions, it helps to make those axons more efficient, allowing brains to do more and to do so more quickly.
As the brain develops, learning experiences are solidified with myelin. For example, when a child first learns to read, the areas of the brain that are used in reading get increased myelin, and (barring some tragic brain event) the child will then forever know how to read. Myelination is what we’re talking about when we talk about something being “hardwired in the brain.” It’s an amazing process, and it doesn’t stop when we hit puberty; a healthy brain can continue growing and myelinating for about five decades. With myelin, we learn; without it, we are vulnerable to a series of problems including an inability to focus, pay attention, feel empathy, and even discern reality.
But there are many different things in our environment that reduce the healthiness of the brain and impact its ability to keep growing white matter. A range of things—from toxins to stress—can cause problems with this part of our brains, limiting our ability to hardwire learning. One of the things that can cause such problems is overstimulation. Think about how overstimulating the Internet is. Naturally, it’s going to affect our white matter. This is a particular issue for younger brains that go through key developmental periods in which myelin-strengthening is not only at its peak but also at its most vulnerable.
China-based research indicates a direct link between Internet addiction and myelin. People diagnosed with Internet addiction disorder in one study had problems with myelin in the areas of the brain that are related to decision-making, emotional generation, executive attention, and the ability to store and retrieve information. The white matter carries information from one part of the brain to the other so that the whole brain can operate properly. When it’s depleted, the connections don’t work as well. For example, your brain doesn’t properly connect the lower emotional impulses and the higher cognitive management, so you might not be as capable of thinking before you act.
This research supports what other brain studies have found about addiction in general. It changes the brain.
You have probably heard about neuroplasticity before. Also called brain plasticity or neuroelasticity, it refers to the brain’s ability to change and grow over time. It’s truly an amazing thing. When someone experiences a brain injury, they may be unable to do certain things because that part of the brain is hindered, but through therapy they can create new neural pathways that allow them to resume function. The brain can learn again.
There are two types of neuroplasticity: synaptic and cellular. Synaptic neuroplasticity is a change in the strength of the connection across the junction from one brain cell to the next (synapse). Cellular neuroplasticity is a change in the number of brain cells that are talking to one another. Synaptic neuroplasticity is lifelong (an old dog can learn new tricks), but cellular neuroplasticity primarily happens early in life. About 90 percent of our cellular structure is set by the age of six and the rest through to age twenty-five.
In fact, we get an overabundance of brain cells when we’re babies. We grow really fast. We can learn much faster as children than we can as adults. We get a lot of brain cells really fast, and then the cells go through a pruning process; what you don’t use you lose, and what you do use grows and strengthens. Therefore, it’s especially important to pay attention to what we are and aren’t feeding into our brains while the brain is still in that pruning process. That said, because of neuroplasticity, habitual behaviors can change the brain at any point in time.
Neuroplasticity means that if we do something regularly, it will change the brain. It may change some of the cells. It will certainly change the synaptic connections. The behavior we engage in every day shapes the brain. Now think about some of our common online behavior, things that we have all gotten just a little bit too comfortable with since the Internet became so prevalent in our worlds. Let your mind wander for a moment to all of the things you did or saw online in the past week: social media posts you scrolled past in less than one second, comments you read in a few seconds or wrote in under a minute, memes that quickly made you laugh before you rapidly forwarded them to someone else, stories you browsed while multitasking, and … the list goes on. All of those are very short, addictive behaviors that are teaching our neural pathways to skim, stay shallow, see information and pass it along but not retain it, and quickly jump from thought to thought.
If that’s what we’re teaching our neural pathways, at what expense are we doing so? Remember, the habits we do every day create those pathways. When we stop doing them, the pathways start to fade. We’re teaching our brain those quick-fix activities at the expense of deep thought, focused attention, and memory retention.
This is your brain on the Internet.
As you can see, your brain is designed in such a manner that it is supersensitive to the potential for addiction. Some people are more at risk than others due to their own natural brain chemistry and brain structure. Someone with damage to their prefrontal cortex or with naturally low serotonin levels may be at more risk of addiction than someone without those things. But all brains are at risk. And the people who are selling us this technology are well aware of that risk. In fact, they are in the business of exploiting it.
The companies that develop the devices, the apps, the websites, and the advertising all benefit when you spend more time on those things. They want you to become addicted. In fact, there are countless stories of some of the biggest names in technology making sure to limit their own children’s exposure to technology precisely because they’re so aware of how addictive it is designed to be.
Several industry insiders have pointed out the similarity of apps and devices to slot machines. It’s no casual comment. Some of the designers behind these tools have specifically studied the psychology of slot machines and then adapted their techniques to computers and smartphones. They prey upon the brain’s desire for intermittent reward by creating tools that provide exactly that. They do it so that they can make money. When they show up to the table to ask for more venture capital, they have to show that more and more people are using their product, that they’re using it for longer, and that they keep coming back to use it more and more. So, if you find yourself checking a particular app or site more often over time, staying on it longer, and talking to others who are doing the same, it’s likely because it was designed that way. In fact, there are people who have full-time jobs specifically to aid in addictive design; although some companies use creative names that hide that this is what they’re doing, more and more are offering job positions for “demand engineers” or “attention engineering” positions. People get paid, often mightily so, to demand your attention.
Technology author Nir Eyal spent several years studying how different companies were getting people addicted and distilled it down to a four-step process he calls the hooked model. Through this model, companies are able to repeatedly get customers back again and again without expensive or aggressive advertising, and they do so by manipulating people’s existing habits. The four steps are as follows:
This is just one model of how the addictive nature of technology works, but it points to the fact that companies are all aware of your brain’s addictive nature. They want to take advantage of it because they benefit when you become addicted. In a well-known 2017 episode of Bill Maher’s Real Time, cited in Cal Newport’s book Digital Minimalism, Maher directly compares “the tycoons of social media” to tobacco farmers. Historically, Big Tobacco exploited addiction, particularly in children, to sell their products, and Maher, among others, argues that social media giants (and other leaders in technology and media) are doing exactly the same thing. They know it’s addictive, they know it’s changing our brains and affecting our health and relationships, and they are exploiting it anyway because they want to sell their product.
Consider, for example, how we have already gotten so used to predictive text and targeted advertising. When you go to type something into Google, it fills in possible responses for you. Whenever you are online, you see ads that are targeted just to you. These things can prey upon your existing addictive tendencies. For example, if you search for a dating app, you’ll suddenly start seeing all sorts of ads for dating or about being single. This can lead you to follow more and more links and download more and more similar apps. Companies do this on purpose.