>[!abstract] >**Dopamine** is a critical neurotransmitter that is responsible for reinforcing behaviors. Getting a "dopamine hit" from social media has entered the modern lexicon, but it's actually a bit of a misnomer. Dopamine isn't the pleasure chemical that people think it is. In fact, there have been experiments where dopamine activity was suppressed in animals, and they still displayed normal pleasure reactions to enjoyable stimuli. The mild enjoyment we might get from scrolling or watching short videos comes from other neurotransmitters, including endogenous opioids and cannabinoids (enjoyment, comfort, satisfaction) and oxytocin (social connection, belonging, attachment). They are responsible for making food taste good, sex feel pleasurable, and social interaction rewarding. What dopamine really does is to reinforce learning under *uncertainty*, not pleasure. Scrolling, like slot machines, delivers unpredictable outcomes: most are expectedly poor, but the occasional surprise triggers dopamine prediction-error signals. In turn, those signals strengthen the habit of checking, even when the actual enjoyment is low. That's how we end up with the familiar compulsive urge to scroll despite weak satisfaction. Ironically, if everything was predictably *even* in quality, we'd get no dopamine and would lose interest quickly. So perhaps the ultimate detox algo, and solution to social media addiction, is to just remove outliers. This might even happen organically if boring AI slop finally crowds out the occasional surprising quality content. >[!related] >- **North** (upstream): — >- **West** (similar): — >- **East** (different): — >- **South** (downstream): —