Is Instagram A Drug?: Dr. Anna Lembke

What is dopamine? Can social media use become an addiction? How
is social media impacting our brains and ability to feel pleasure
or pain? How can we break the addictive cycle of our digital
devices? 


Dr. Anna Lembke, psychiatrist and author of the new book,
“Dopamine Nation: Finding Balance In the Age of Indulgence”,
joins us this week to answer these questions. She has done
extensive work to study and treat a new phenomenon: social media
addiction. As Dr. Lembke explains, social media use has become
compulsive and addictive. It is a way to comfort ourselves by
completely distracting our minds. Interestingly, by comforting
and distracting ourselves with devices, we are actually causing
ourselves more pain and suffering. How? Dr. Lembke shares her
perspective on the topic. 


 What you will learn in this episode: 


What happens in our brains when we use our devices

How our dependency on our devices are doing more harm than
good

How we can break the addictive cycle

Why Dr. Lembke feels more connected and reachable without a
smart phone 



“Boredom is a really scary emotion because all of a sudden we are
confronted with questions about the deeper meaning and purpose of
our lives. And those are things that we need to be confronted
with.” 


“Instagram is a drug. It releases dopamine in the reward pathway
exactly like other reinforcing addicting drugs that people have
been taking.” 


“What we need to do now is intentionally make our lives less
convenient. Intentionally seek out painful, arduous, challenging
things.”


“We’ve become so Inundated with pleasure and so insulated from
pain that we hardly even know anymore what it is to experience
pain and distress. And most of our suffering comes from excessive
reward” 


“We live in this high reward, drug-ified eco system that’s made
us all vulnerable to the problem of over consumption and in some
cases addiction” 


Listen to the SuperAge podcast wherever you get your pods. 


Read Dr. Anna Lembke’s new book: https://www.annalembke.com


Say hi to the AGEIST team!