How Smartphone (and App) Designers Get You Addicted

Dopamine Discharge

Instead of doing the bare minimum needed to stay alive, you feel good when you achieve something extra. This dopamine hit is also involved in forming habits: you’re more likely to repeat actions that made you feel good.

If you get a dopamine reward from using your phone, you’ll go back and do the same thing again. So, if you get likes for a post on Facebook, the social part of your brain – which evolved to make living in community easier – responds.

You get a brief feeling of pleasure but as soon as the dopamine rush is over you’re left wanting to recreate the sensation. So, you’ll post again.

And again. And again. Most of the people who post about the tiny details of their day know that their breakfast or their commute or the weather isn’t super interesting, but they feel compelled to chase that dopamine high.

The same principle gets you scrolling endlessly through Twitter and Instagram. You saw something that made you smile, or that you identified with (which is important for that social part of your brain – it makes you feel you’re not alone) and then you’ll keep on looking for something else that makes you feel the same way.

This process is completely unconscious: most people who are scrolling through tweet after tweet can’t actually say what they’re looking for; they just feel driven to look for something.