The endless scroll, the “doom-scrolling” that some call it, is a chase for dopamine. What is right there beneath my thumb that will tickle my mind and allow me to stare at my screen in a near-drugged-stooper?
The addiction we have to background noise and distraction seems innocent enough, but the problems it will introduce into your life aren’t seen until they are too heavy to be lifted off easily.
Take multi-tasking for an example. Multi-tasking has been going on probably forever, but we have a newfound addiction to multi-tasking in our modern times.
Most people don’t multitask because they are good at doing more than one thing at a time. We multitask because we are distracted and crave something else to do after minutes or seconds of focus on a single task. The chase for dopamine has trained our minds to be impatient and unable to lock our focus on one thing at a time.
We crave being distracted. There is a discomfort if we lock in on one thing for too long. That's my theory, at least.
“I started working on a joke for this post, but I got distracted watching people walk around my neighborhood.”