Messages, emails, likes on social networks… we spend more and more time on our smartphones and each notification grabs us at any time of the day (and sometimes, night!).
So much so that it is hard to imagine living far from your phone, or even without it. This is what Professor Andrew Huberman, a neuroscientist at Stanford University in the United States, calls “the effect of hypnotized chicken“.
In search of ever more dopamine
“When you engage in a behavior over and over and over again while you tell yourself, ‘This isn’t even interesting,’ you’re officially addicted.”he said on YouTube. “This is the litmus test of dependency..”
If initially, using your smartphone can release dopamine through a neural reward circuit – like slot machines for example – it gets exhausted over time.When you find yourself scrolling frenziedly, you’re looking for more dopamine release. But your dopamine supply is going to be depleted, at least for that activity.”he tells Stylist. And once the dopamine wears off, This is where addiction manifests itself.
The only solution: go without your smartphone for 1 hour a day
Pour limit this dependencethe neuroscientist shares an unstoppable technique, which he himself practices on a daily basis: it would be absolutely fundamental tolearn to turn off your phone for at least an hour a dayevery day.
A gesture that may seem simple at first glance, but which turns out to be complex for some, for several reasons. First of all: FOMO (of Fear of missing out in English), or the fear of missing important events, fear of finding oneself cut off from loved ones or of their reaction to a lack of response…
A gesture not so easy in 2024
“It’s incredibly difficult when I turn my phone off, people get really upset”confides the neuroscientist.We all operate on an attachment map made up of space (where people are), time (when we will see them again) and proximity (feelings of intimacy)”he continues. And according to him, it is our very phone that allows us to draw on these maps and thus defines our attachments and our relationships.
But, while cutting off your phone may annoy some of your relationships, this practice can only bring you benefits in the future: controlling your addiction and at the same time, limit the anxiety often generated by social networks. And at the same time the opportunity to test some of your closest relationships!
Source : This is why you should turn your phone off for at least an hour every day, according to a neuroscientistStylist, August 2022
Source: www.topsante.com
