I am willing to bet my money that you use one of these apps:
Let us call these companies "Big Tech". Big Tech makes money out of ads. They also want you to engage with ads. Big Tech has designed advanced algorithms that focus on retaining you on the app for as long as possible.
Why?
The more you use the app, the more ads you see. More ads = 🤑.
Overstimulation is the root problem. Most people say, "I did nothing today and wasted a whole day", while the truth is you were not doing anything. You were overstimulating your brain the whole day with "big tech" apps and that is what you did.
When you use these apps, you tell your brain:
Your brain hates to do NOTHING. Let me say that again. Your brain hates to do NOTHING. In other words, Your brain likes to WORK.
If you don't believe me, I challenge you to do nothing for 1 hour.
Your brain will not be able to do this. You will break and get to doing something. It is part of why humans are the smartest species. We don't just sit around doing nothing.
If you can tell me after a TikTok video or Instagram post "Damn, I really learned something useful there that can help my life", then, go back to doing that, but 99% of people don't do that.
If you want to say that you watch "Ted ED" videos or learn on youtube I would like to say that is not true. You know when you are actually learning and when you are just watching these videos.
This is the problem of 'infotainment'. These are informational articles or videos where you think you are learning something but it's just another stimulus for your brain.
Dopamine is a neurotransmitter molecule that influences brain pathways that are involved in motivation, movement, cognition, and reward-driven learning.
I like to think of it like this:
If you don't have daily, monthly, and yearly goals to work towards then you will resort to 'Big Tech' to entertain your brain because your brain is not lazy and needs stimulus. Big Tech gives your brain stimulus and makes money. Your brain feels like it was working but in the end, you know you are the one who wasted time the whole time.
This is why I don't use social media.
"Stop trading your ambition for cheap dopamine".
The cheap dopamine I am referring to, is the dopamine that get released when you mindlessly scroll on social media.