The Hidden Dopamine Trap — Escaping Screen Addiction to Reclaim Your Joy

You don't feel dependent on anything, yet you're constantly reaching for your phone, craving intense flavors, and needing stronger stimulation just to feel something.

By: A Midwestern Doctor

STORY AT-A-GLANCE

• Modern children’s content (especially fast-paced YouTube shows like CoComelon) is engineered to maximize watch time through rapid cuts and constant dopamine triggers, creating addictive patterns in toddlers that lead to overstimulation, irritability, and severe tantrums when screens are removed

• This deliberate design exploits the brain’s orienting response, rewiring developing nervous systems toward novelty-seeking while impairing sustained attention, executive function, and emotional regulation — effects supported by studies linking fast-paced media to ADHD-like symptoms and long-term attentional deficits

• These same dopamine-hijacking tactics have permeated broader society, from addictive processed foods to social media and pornography, shifting us from sustained serotonin-based happiness and presence to fleeting, hollow spikes that leave people feeling disconnected, depleted, and perpetually unsatisfied

• This engineered addiction is especially damaging in romantic relationships, where the cultural push for intense dopamine highs and excitement erodes the capacity for deep, stable, and truly nourishing intimate bonds built on genuine connection and contentment

• A healthy, non-depleted nervous system naturally resists the pull of these artificial dopamine spikes, allowing us to appreciate subtler and more authentic sources of joy; ultimately, escaping this trap and reclaiming a vivid connection to life requires restoring nervous system health and vitality — a key focus of this article

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A few days ago, while talking to a circle of friends about child-rearing, one mother compared an infant’s tendency to throw tantrums when sugary foods were withdrawn to what many parents were facing with modern children’s video programs and that she’d learned in the groups she belonged to that numerous parents were now switching to showing their children the shows they’d grown up watching as those shows did not have the same destabilizing effects on their children.

As we discussed this topic (e.g., many of us have banned screens after noticing how negatively they impact developing nervous systems), I realized this needed to be publicly discussed due to:

• How unfair and tragic it is that due to the modern toxicity they are bombarded with, so many children no longer have health and spark within them that bring joy to everyone around them.

• All the problems we discussed with children directly tie into the central issues I feel are facing much broader segments of society (e.g., the dopamine trap society uses to control us and make us feel dead inside).

Note: It continually astounds me (and those I point it out to) how different naturally raised children are, and how much rarer they are becoming, given the many fronts on which the predatory forces around us are attacking our health. For those interested, some of the most important strategies I’ve come across for raising healthy children are discussed here.

Addictive Programming

Large swathes of parents describe modern children’s content (particularly YouTube videos like CoComelon) as highly engaging to the point of addiction, with intense emotional reactions when removed:

• A 2025 Talker Research survey of 2,000 U.S. parents found 22% report “full-on tantrums” as a side effect of excessive screen time, alongside irritability (27%) and mood swings (24%).¹

  Note: This survey has other disturbing statistics (e.g., 67% of parents fear losing precious time with their children due to screen addiction).

• The 2025 Common Sense Media Census states that 25% of parents use screen media to help their child calm down when upset, with 17% reporting their child uses mobile devices to self-soothe.²

• On Reddit parenting forums, searches for “CoComelon tantrum” yield thousands of threads describing similar patterns: calm during viewing, explosive tantrums upon shutdown — far worse than with slower shows like older Sesame Street.

• The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) acknowledges in clinical guidelines that high-engagement digital media can lead to tantrums when interrupted due to behavioral reinforcement designed for maximum engagement.³

Online reports from parents surged after 2015 as YouTube kids content shifted to being optimized for toddlers viewing without parents. Research suggests this creates ADHD-like symptoms:

• Modern shows’ rapid cuts (1 to 4 seconds) overstimulate developing brains, making it hard to sustain focus on slower tasks (the “overstimulation hypothesis”).⁴

• A 2011 study exposed 4-year-olds to 9 minutes of fast-paced SpongeBob (11-second cuts) vs. slower Caillou or drawing; the fast-paced group showed immediate deficits in executive function lasting up to 4 hours.⁵

  Note: The AAP recommends parents avoid fast-paced programs for kids under 5.

• A 2004 study found over 2 hours of TV daily before age 3 was linked to attention problems by age 7.⁶

• A 2018 review found early fast-paced exposure correlated with later attentional deficits, as it “rewires” brains toward novelty-seeking.⁷ In mice, excessive sensory stimulation decreased learning and memory while increasing risk-taking.⁸

• A 2023 study linked higher toddler screen time to increased anger/frustration later, with each extra hour raising risk by 13%.⁹

Many parents specifically cited CoComelon as particularly problematic, attributing it to rapidly changing frames every few seconds. I watched several episodes to verify this, noting how disorienting shots changing every 1 to 4 seconds felt.

Note: Many believe shorter segments before screen cuts have been immensely destructive to the American psyche, taking away people’s ability to maintain the attention spans necessary to perceive deeper meaning in life.

Why YouTube kids channels do this:

• This maximizes “watch time” (how they profit). Very young children have short attention spans — rapid cuts act like a visual “ping” yanking attention back, increasing view duration.

• Every sudden cut triggers the brain’s “orienting response.”¹⁰ In toddlers, this reflex is especially strong. CoComelon exploits it hundreds of times per episode, creating a near-constant dopamine loop.

• It’s designed for “auto-play.” Fast pacing keeps kids watching during the critical 3-6 second window before the next video starts, chaining them for hours.

• These channels use analytics to optimize pacing, colors, and sound effects, finding that cuts every ~2 to 3 seconds keeps toddlers glued more effectively.

• Classic shows (Mister Rogers, old Sesame Street, Blue’s Clues) were deliberately calm with long takes, designed for developmental appropriateness. Modern YouTube content is intended to be watched alone by toddlers, so “grab and hold attention at all costs” wins.

  Note: Classic children’s shows like Mister Rogers would leave pauses so children could process their feelings — the polar opposite of these channels.

Key Implications

1. Evidence has emerged that screens have been designed to be as addictive as possible through dopamine-triggering stimuli. Many social media executives express regret about what their products have done to children’s brains. Many tech executives even send their kids to schools where screens are banned.¹¹

   Note: I believe this partly because marketers constantly concoct ways to hook people, a process accelerated by internet-enabled rapid testing and distribution of addictive content.

2. After the DPT vaccine entered the population, neurological and behavioral issues rippled through society. In the 1950s, “minimal brain damage“ [MBD] was coined, with hyperactivity as its defining characteristic. MBD symptoms overlap significantly with encephalitis, DPT injuries, and autism. Eventually, they found it could be “treated” with stimulants, and the disorder was renamed ADHD.

   Note: Physicians like Gabor Maté have reported that many homeless, addicted patients showed undiagnosed ADHD, and when it is properly treated as part of trauma-informed care approach, it stabilized them and often greatly improved the trajectory of their lives.¹²

3. I suspect something similar is happening with screens — their dopamine-releasing nature is being used to counteract behavioral disturbances in vaccine-injured children. Many parents lacking bandwidth to handle misbehaving children are forced to provide addictive technology, transforming children into lifelong users.

4. I’ve long believed slavery ended partly because economic servitude became more profitable, with labor outsourced to poorer nations where cruelty could exist out of sight. Since the desire to exploit people never disappeared, other methods emerged — like turning people into lifelong pharmaceutical customers (a process often set in motion by chronic illnesses triggered by vaccination). The same is happening with harvesting attention online and collecting data.

Consider: something parents trust their children to watch was designed to hijack their children regardless of harm to developing nervous systems — and rather than be penalized, it’s amassed billions of lucrative views because algorithms incentivize this quickly produced content.

Note: There are many other issues with algorithmically AI generated children’s content, such as numerous distressing adult themes routinely being shown to children.

Living Through Dopamine

My circle believes many of the problems in our society stem from the fact that the current economic system relies upon people consuming as much as possible. This is problematic, as the only way you can keep getting people to buy things they don’t need is by emotionally marketing the products to them. For this reason, the marketing system evolved to create a sense of future gratification (rather than contentment in the present) and to make people feel miserable until they have it.

Put differently, since these expectations were crafted to trigger addictive dopamine spikes, the society shifted to transforming one’s conception of reality from a smooth flow you felt connected and enlivened by to a jolted, disconnected set of spikes where happiness was always fleeting and synthetic rather than real.

Note: I cannot comment on this due to lacking direct experience with them, but many people I’ve spoken to have analogized this to the difference between taking stimulant drugs (which produce sharp, spiky dopamine releases followed by crashes) and the classic (serotonin mediated) hallucinogens/psychedelics (which create a sustained opening of perception and meaning, often described as a richer, more continuous sense of presence and connectedness that can persist long after the drug is gone).

While many have described the dynamic I am alluding to, what is far less appreciated is that your disposition to one polarity or the other (the hollow dopamine spikes vs. a vivid connection with the present) is greatly influenced by the state of your nervous system.

This is because when the nervous system is depleted and fatigued (e.g., from excessive computer use or stress), individuals are far more predisposed to the dopamine spikes as they are much less able to appreciate the subtleties of life (which arguably are where the actual value and content of being alive comes from) and instead can only register strong stimuli (e.g., rough physical contact or strong flavors).

Worse still, our society not only continually conditions us to seek the strong dopamine producing stimuli, but also continually depletes and injures our nervous system.

Note: Fatigued nervous systems are also less able to maintain sustained long-term attention on something.

In my case, two things made me aware of this:

1. I am quite sensitive to changes within my body (e.g., how differently I perceive things depending on my energy levels — particularly after prolonged periods without sufficient restorative sleep).

   As technology has evolved, I’ve also noticed more and more how all electronic media (particularly computers, television, and music) unnaturally influence you and frequently use very similar techniques to induce these dopamine spikes or shift your internal rhythms and emotions while simultaneously disconnecting you from your environment (e.g., I would frequently notice myself getting “amped up” or “pulled in” and then often having a crash where I felt worse once it was withdrawn — at which point I became very concerned I’d invited an external influence into my life which did that to me).

2. When I was in my teens, after learning processed sugar was bad for you, I tried to quit eating sugar and went through a withdrawal process where some very odd things happened (e.g., I had dreams about accidentally eating sugar, failing, and hence needing to quit my diet) — many of which I learned matched classic withdrawals from an addictive substance (which I found quite disturbing as I’d gone out of my way to avoid all addictive psychoactive substances).

   Then, once I hadn’t eaten sugar for about a month, other than a very distant longing, I no longer had any desire to consume it, and more importantly, noticed that whenever I (essentially accidentally) ate a sugary processed item, rather than enjoying it, my body rejected it as the food was devoid of nourishment.

From this, I made two major conclusions:

• A significant amount of addiction came from the microbiome, as it felt like something else was trying to hijack my mind to make me consume sugar, and because it all suddenly disappeared in a timeframe which coincided with those microbes dying off from starvation.

  Note: There is a large body of data showing certain microbes and parasites can create significant psychological effects on their hosts.

• The body has a natural ability to tell if food is good for you, and would reject “bad” or nutritionally deficient food. In turn, since that natural reflex destroys the processed food industry’s business model, a solution had to be found, and this was to mix in addictive drugs, which overrode this natural response.

Over the decades, I have come across key pieces of evidence supporting these conclusions. Some of the most poignant (recent) ones included:

• In 2010, David Kessler (a former FDA commissioner) published The End of Overeating: Taking Control of the Insatiable American Appetite, which highlighted that American food has been engineered to be as addictive as possible and that food industry executives had confirmed this to him.¹³

  There, he highlighted that while Americans were trained to prioritize strong tastes rather than subtle tastes in food, and that foreign chefs find Americans have an extremely unrefined palate and demand fatty-salty-sugary food rather than the rich blend of flavors seen in the traditional ethnic cuisines, and because of this, ethnic cuisines would always be forced to become Americanized (e.g., Chinese food here is vastly different from what it’s like in China) or be forced to go out of business.

  Note: This point echoes a longstanding frustration of mine, as I’ve had so many times I found a restaurant I really liked (due to them catering to the complex depth of flavors seen in the traditional cuisine rather than the spikes in Americanized food) which then went out of business (including many cases where I tried to support them and get others to as well).

• I recently learned (through Calley Means¹⁴) that in the 1980s, Big Tobacco bought out the processed food industry and then, as they had done with cigarettes, prioritized making processed foods as addictive as possible.¹⁵ ¹⁶

• Finally, in 2017, another respected author in this field, Robert Lustig M.D., seeking to explain the why behind Kessler’s 2010 work, published The Hacking of the American Mind: The Science Behind the Corporate Takeover of Our Bodies and Brains.¹⁷ It tied together much of what I’d concluded on the issue, revolving around the idea that the brain has a dopamine-driven “temporary pleasure” circuit alongside a serotonin-driven “sustained happiness” circuit.

  Lustig argued that deliberate efforts have been made to shift us away from serotonin toward dopamine circuits, using addiction to these spikes to control society at every level and keep us in a constant state of monetizable distress, disconnection, and unhappiness.

  This dynamic is especially tragic in romantic relationships, where the culturally encouraged chase for dopamine-fueled highs and fleeting excitement pulls people away from the stable, profound, and truly nourishing connections that lie at the heart of lasting intimacy.

  Note: Lustig’s work also highlighted that excessive electronic usage (due to its addictive nature, particularly highly stimulating video games, social media, gambling, or pornography) activates the dopamine circuits, priming children to become more susceptible to junk food cravings.

  I believe the pornography aspect is particularly tragic as it’s made a large number of people switch from being able to enjoy the deep contentment of a visceral and alive connection with another human being to seeking out fleeting dopamine spiking experiences which can only be found in mental fantasies (which pornography caters to), a string of new partners, or extreme sexual activities (a problem which is further compounded by depleted nervous systems being unable to appreciate the subtleties of human contact).

Reconnecting with Life (Conclusion)

At this point, I believe the “dopamine” way of living life is a trap most people benefit immensely from being freed from — particularly since, as every drug addict knows, any dopamine spike is always followed by a low that makes you feel even more dead and disconnected inside (along with increasingly strong spikes being required to recreate the joy the initial spike brought).

Unfortunately, extricating oneself from this trap is quite challenging, in part because our society has been designed around the dopamine model, and in part because, when your nervous system has been depleted, it becomes much harder to appreciate the subtler (but far more nourishing) experiences of life. This creates a vicious cycle where nervous system depletion drives one toward dopamine-spiking behaviors, which in turn further deplete and dysregulate the nervous system.

Over the years, I’ve come to believe the most important thing you can do is to restore the health of your nervous system. When the nervous system is healthy and resilient, the pull toward artificial stimulation naturally diminishes, and the capacity to feel alive and connected in ordinary moments returns.

In parallel, I think that one of the primary reasons people seek out a variety of spiritual and mind-body or meditative practices is to reclaim this state of being, and the fact that there is an ever growing market for that demonstrates that the depletion of our society is reaching the point people are seeing that can no longer address this depletion by overriding it with more stimulation.

Note: To restore the connection to life it is critical to utilize practices which relax and integrate the nervous system rather than stimulating ones which strain and fragment the nervous system.

Feeling alive inside is the natural antidote to dopamine addiction; when you genuinely feel alive, the hollow promise of the next spike loses its appeal. Our nervous system is one of the most precious resources we have.

Particularly in this society, where highly functioning cognition is essential within so many aspects of the economy — yet simultaneously, our nerves are constantly under attack from an unprecedented number of directions, robbing both our health and the immense joy we can experience from simply being alive (rather than feel empty and continually searching for strong stimuli which can give us a brief sense of being alive).

Author’s Note: This is an abridged version of a longer article which discusses the points covered here in more detail and highlights many of the simple practices (e.g., breathing exercises) which can be done to restore the nervous system and reconnect with life. That article can be read here.

A Note from Dr. Mercola About the Author

A Midwestern Doctor (AMD) is a board-certified physician from the Midwest and a longtime reader of Mercola.com. I appreciate AMD’s exceptional insight on a wide range of topics and am grateful to share it. I also respect AMD’s desire to remain anonymous since AMD is still on the front lines treating patients. To find more of AMD’s work, be sure to check out The Forgotten Side of Medicine on Substack.

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