No Thanks to DOPAMINE, SmartPhones are 'Taking Over'

No Thanks to DOPAMINE, SmartPhones are 'Taking Over'

📵It doesn't matter, could be a Sunday or a Monday, a business day or a local holiday.  Our smartphones are literally taking over an entire generation.  And this is not straight from the newswires.  Trevor Haynes of Harvard highlighted this in his piece 3 yrs ago [http://sitn.hms.harvard.edu/flash/2018/dopamine-smartphones-battle-time/].

📵We as parents, uncles, aunts, we all want to pamper our kids as much as we want and it's no news to hear and see during the last Christmas Holidays when children were gifted with smartphones.  Truly, they deserve to be pampered but have you heard of DOPAMINE ?

📵No less than Simon Sinek, the respected British-American inspirational speaker and author [https://simonsinek.com/] really loathed seeing phones in the corporate world wherein attendees come into the meeting room where their phones are right in front of them [and Simon Sinek says it doesn't matter if you turn your phone face down, it's still a no-no].  Why ?  It's during those moment right before the meeting when relationships are built with how's your kids, how's your car.

📵Back to our kids, the latest generation.  Why are they the toughest to manage these days ?  How patient are they ?  Nope, they are the most impatient generation ever.  How satisfied and happy are they ?  Yessireee, those smartphones will drive their happiness trajectory up because of notifications, likes, responses !

📵Without casting aspersion on the best intentions of the late Steve Jobs, Apple's architect and brains, today's generation are now a tough nut to crack in terms of satisfying them until.... the smartphone starts emitting notifications and responses to trigger DOPAMINE effect!

📵The lemonade blog [https://www.lemonade.com/blog/psychology-behind-phone-addiction/#:~:text=Our%20brains%20are%20designed%20to,aroused%2C%20motivated%2C%20and%20happy.] says it all.  It's called the 'DOPAMINE Reward Loop'.  And what's the ramification to our latest generation.  They have become the most impatient kids EVER.  What did drive them to become impatient ?  Blame it to the instant gratifications and happiness they always had, again no thanks to DOPAMINE.

📵What then is the antidote to all these ?  Let's pause.  Smoking, Alcohol, Gambling.  Age limits are imposed to curtail access to it.  But Social Media ?  The floodgates are just wide open, there's no let up.  So let's push for DOPAMINE Fasting and it doesn't mean depriving our kids to access smartphones, no senor.  It is simply managing, regulating, controlling its use.  Factor-in this pandemic and you could see both kids and adults spending 4-8hrs on average per day.  Things have just become too unwieldy !!!