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Why Is It So Hard to Stop Scrolling?

Most of us have opened an app “for a minute” and looked up half an hour later. Part of the reason lies in an old finding. In the 1950s, B. F. Skinner and his colleagues showed that pigeons rewarded on unpredictable schedules kept pecking far more persistently than those rewarded every time. A feed works the same way: you never know whether the next post will be dull or delightful.

Dopamine is often called the pleasure chemical, but research by the neuroscientist Kent Berridge points elsewhere. In his experiments, dopamine was tied mainly to wanting, the pull toward a reward, rather than to liking it. Wanting and enjoying can drift apart, which helps explain why we keep reaching for things that no longer make us feel good.

The psychiatrist Anna Lembke offers a useful picture in her book Dopamine Nation: pleasure and pain sit on a seesaw, and after quick pleasures the brain leans toward discomfort to restore balance. Activities that ask for effort first, such as reading, exercise or making something, tend to leave a quieter and longer-lasting satisfaction.