HealthyGamerGG - How Your Phone Controls You

Episode Date: September 1, 2025

In this episode, Dr. K breaks down the hype around dopamine detoxes and social media breaks—and why they don’t actually solve the problem. Drawing on his background in addiction psychiatry, he explains that detoxing only pauses the cycle temporarily; if you go back to the same habits, nothing changes. Instead, Dr. K explores the neuroscience of dopamine, how technology hijacks our survival systems, and why balance is about building real-world rewards, not chasing quick fixes. Topics include: Why “dopamine detoxes” are a myth The neuroscience of withdrawal and tolerance How social media and video games mimic survival rewards like achievement and community Why balance means creating real-world alternatives, not just unplugging for a week Practical tips: protecting your morning dopamine, building sustainable habits, and shifting cravings toward healthier activities This is a thoughtful look at why tech is so addictive and how to reclaim your brain from it. HG Coaching : https://bit.ly/46bIkdo Dr. K's Guide to Mental Health: https://bit.ly/44z3Szt HG Memberships : https://bit.ly/3TNoMVf Products & Services : https://bit.ly/44kz7x0 HealthyGamer.GG: https://bit.ly/3ZOopgQ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This episode is brought to you by Redfin. You're listening to a podcast, which means you're probably multitasking, maybe even scrolling home listings on Redfin, saving homes without expecting to get them. But Redfin isn't just built for endless browsing. It's built to help you find and own a home. With agents who close twice as many deals, when you find the one, you've got a real shot at getting it. Get started at Redfin.com. Own the dream.

Hey, chat. Welcome to the Healthy Gamer Gigi podcast. I'm Dr. Al-Ocinoja, but you can call me Dr. K. I'm a psychiatrist, gamer, and co-founder of Healthy Gamer. On this podcast, we explore mental health and life in the digital age, breaking down big ideas to help you better understand yourself and the world around you. So let's dive right in. Social media detoxes and dopamine detoxes do not work.

The reason that video games and social media are so damn addictive is because they allow us to take a break from real life. All of the things that you wish you would do, you will start to want to do. All you need to do is Hey, y'all, if you're interested in applying some of the principles that we share to actually create change in your life, check out Dr. Kay's Guide to Mental Health. And so we start by understanding what literally is meditation. How does experience shape us as human beings? How do we strengthen the mind itself as an organ? And so by understanding our mind, we understand a very, very simple tool, a crucial tool that we have to learn how to use if we want to build the life that we want to. So check out the link in the bio and start your journey today.

Social media detoxes and dopamine detoxes do not work. For the last two or three years, everyone has been talking about dopamine detox. Social media detox. You should detox. Take a break from your social media, man. It'll be good for your mental health. Turns out, it doesn't do anything. So here's how I understand this, okay? So I did a little bit of something called addiction psychiatry for a little while.

And in addiction psychiatry, we learned a really important lesson. If you take a two-week break from heroin and then start using heroin again every day, turns out doesn't do much for your mental health. Everyone for a long time has been talking about the benefits of detox. So here's what happens. Okay, we have to understand this from a neuroscience perspective. When our brain becomes dependent on something, whether that's a substance, whether that's a behavior.

And whatever that substance or behavior is, when we have a neurological effect that activates our neurons in a particular way, we usually develop some degree of tolerance, right? So if I drink a cup of coffee every morning, the first cup of coffee I have will keep me wired, but over time I become dependent on it. And without the coffee, I actually become cranky. This is what we call withdrawal. So I think when we have a lot of these social media detoxes, dopamine detoxes, I'm taking a break for a week or a month or whatever, a weekend or a week, we can subjectively feel sometimes

good, but oftentimes the first thing that happens, even when you detox off of social media and dopamine-related things, is that you go through withdrawal, right? So, and this is the other crazy thing that I think, like, somewhere along the way, like all of the people who are, you know, all the influencers started talking about detoxes. And we've talked about it, too, which we'll get to in a second. But what I think they missed is that, like, in psychiatry, when we detox you off of something, the goal is not for you to go right back onto it at the end. Right? So, like, when I detox someone off of alcohol, so let's say I'm working in a residential addiction treatment facility or in an inpatient hospital setting, and I'm detoxing someone off of alcohol, it's like we're going to detox you,

and the reason we detox you with, let's say, like, Ivy Ativan or Larazepam over the course of four or five days is so that you don't have a seizure and die. But then the goal is not like, okay, now that you're detoxed, go back out there and drink. The goal of detox is to basically adjust or heal the withdrawal phase so that you can institute healthy habits going forward. So I do think that there are advantages to taking a break from social media for a couple of days. But I think what we see in some of these studies is a withdrawal effect where we actually increase the negative affect that we feel. Once we remove the soothing bomb of social media on our brains, right? Once we remove it, we're going to experience acute withdrawal.

This can actually increase the negative amount of affect we feel. We can feel less positive because we've become dependent on social media for this kind of stuff. And then it gets worse, right? we've got, so we start to experience withdrawal. So we, I have also been guilty of making a video about dopamine detox as everyone is making a video about dopamine detox and we sort of thought we would make one too. But I think if you watch our video, there's a really big difference. And if you look at the way that we approach dopamine, we don't detox off of dopamine. I think I even say this in the video.

You can't detox off of dopamine. Like dopamine is a neurotransmitter that exists in your brain, period. You can't detox off of it, right? It's not like an artificial substance. is kind of like saying, I'm going to detox off of cortisol. Like you can't get rid of cortisol. You can lower your cortisol levels. You can stop the release of cortisol, lower the release of cortisol. But it doesn't work like that. Okay.

So if you all want to be healthy in relation to your social media usage or video game usage or whatever, and that's why we're a healthy gamer, we're not detox gamer, right? We're not like stop. We, what you all have to do is really balance your usage over time. So what we have to understand about social media in particular is that the rates of things like body dysmorphia, the amount of social media that we use correlates with the level of body dysmorphia that we have. At least I believe that. I've seen some studies to that effect, it's not, it's like an evolving area of research, okay? So the main thing is it's kind of like,

okay, if we're like using 10 hours of social media day or four hours of social media day, that is going to have an effect on our mood, it's going to have an effect on our sense of self-worth, it's going to have an effect on our self-image. And those are dose-dependent responses. So what that means is that the more I use social media, the worse I feel. And so you can take an acute detox, but then if you go right back to using it in the same pattern that you did, you're going to get back to, you know, I can detox you off alcohol, but if you go out and you start drinking again, you're going to be back to square one. So I think the reason that everyone loves this idea of social media detox and dopamine

detox is because the addict in your brain loves the idea of, oh, I can take a break for a week and then I can go back to using. I don't actually have to make sustainable, difficult changes in my life. I can feel really good about myself by detoxing for a week and then going back to use it, right? And if you kind of think about it, I've literally had patients who are addicted to things like alcohol who love that. They love going to rehab. They're like, yeah, I'm going to go to rehab for two weeks.

I'm going to detox, reconnect with myself. It's going to be great. But I'm not going to make any long-term changes. I'll feel really good about myself. And then the best thing is I get to give myself a pat on the back because I did something for my health without making any long-term changes. And that's why, like, I hate to say it, but like, you know, there's a lot of content out there where everyone's like, oh, yeah, just do this for like dopamine, dopamine, dopamine,

but like, y'all really have to understand this stuff. Like, you really need to have a solid neuroscience perspective, psychological perspective. It's not simple. How can you find balance with this addictive machine? So if social media detox doesn't work, how do you find a balance with technology? When people hear about our coaching program, their first response is usually, why would I work with another human being when I can watch YouTube videos all on my own? Working with a coach is about amplifying your time and effort.

We're great at wanting things and even making some progress, but we usually struggle with follow through or have some kind of setback. And that's exactly where working with a coach can help. Coaches provide personalized support to help you set appropriate goals, make progress, and even work through setbacks. Just let us know what your goals are, what kind of support you're looking for, and we'll match you with the best coach for your unique needs. Check out the link in the description below to see if coaching is right for you.

So here's what we need to understand. Doesn't matter if you're talking about social media, video games, whatever. And have you all noticed, by the way, that social media and video games are no longer different? Have you noticed that the more that social media evolves, the closer it becomes to a video game? And the more that video games evolve, the more social they become. We have friends lists, we have trophies, we have achievements, we have guilds.

Right? We have more and more complex social interaction. If you are a Monster Hunter Wilds and Joyer, we have SOS flares, right? And what is the equivalent of an SOS flare on social media? It is making a tweet that attacks one group of people while rallying people of my demographic. Oh, all women suck or all men are toxic. This is the equivalent of an SOS flare. You're putting a flare out into the world. friends of mine, come and join me while I try to slay this monster.

Right? That's what happens. So if you all want balance with this kind of stuff, first of all, recognize that balances. Let me think about this. There's something about that term that I dislike, but let me get to, okay, how to develop balance. So this is what we have to understand about technology. The reason that we are all addicted to technology is because technology activates certain parts of our brain that make us feel good, right? Really simple. The question is, why do they make us

feel good? Why do these particular activations make us feel good? So our brain is an instrument that is designed to enhance our survival. In order to enhance our survival, it gives us rewards for things that it thinks will lead to enhancing our survival. So the best example of this is calorie-dense food. When I take sugar and fat and I combine them together, the amount of pleasure that I experience from it is because when my brain evolved, let's say, 60,000, 100,000, 500,000, 5 million years ago, there were two organisms, one who was eating tubers out of the ground, which were very calorically poor. And then when famine happened or starvation happened or there was a bad, a cold year, they died because they didn't have enough fat on their body. And then there's another person who discovered the Twinkie tree. And when they discovered the Twinkie tree and ate from the fruit of the Twinkie tree, their central adiposity increased and when there was a time of hardship,

and the Twinkie Tree giveth no more, they survived. Okay? So our brain has evolved to reward us for certain things, because that leads to an increase in survival. So what people who exploit our addictive, exploit our brains and create addictions do, and I'm not saying they're evil, but the way that they do this is by figuring out what these mechanisms are and giving us a really, really, really easy way to activate those circuits. So what happens in video games is if I say, hi, chat, my name is Dr. Alok Kanoja. I am a psychiatrist who trained at Harvard Medical School, and I was faculty at Harvard. God, embrace the circle jerk, everybody. When I say those things, why is everybody impressed? Because

it is hard to do. So we as human beings value things that are hard to do. We say, hey, if it's hard to do, it's worth a lot. Right? Makes sense. I crossed the ocean and I discovered this new area and now we're going to move there. I crossed the mountain ranges. I went into unsafe territory. I went into the tiger's territory and I hunted something. Anytime there is something difficult and we achieve it, this leads to a survival increase and a uniform respect. So, video game designers make things hard for us because when they increase the difficulty artificially,

right, if video games are too easy, we don't get any dopamine and we disappear. We're like, ah, this is boring. So they make it difficult for us. And the more they make it difficult for us, and the more we achieve, scratches the same itch as going to Harvard. Same thing. Same part of your brain activates. So if we look at social media, they give us in video games, they give us a sense of difficulty

and achievement. They give us a sense of agency and control because Lord knows I don't have enough control in my real life. I can't control what I put into my body. I can't control when I go to work. I can't control the job that I'm in. I can't control whether I even have a job tomorrow. I can't control all kinds of stuff. But why do you all think Minecraft is so addicting to kids? Because it allows them to control, right? I don't get to, my kids make a pillow fort. And when they make a pillow fort, I tell them, okay, it's fine.

Y'all made a pillow fort, now clean it up. Think about it. When you're a child who's making a pillow fort at home, you have to break all of your work down at the end of every time you play. But in Minecraft, you get to build more and more and more. You get to create. Human beings love to create. We reward people who create.

We reward people who build buildings. We reward people who write books. We reward all these things. So our brain is wired to reinforce creative behavior. And so the key thing is that whether it's community, whether it's autonomy, whether it's achievement, right? So even with social media, when I make a post and I get 50% more likes than I usually get, my brain tells me, ah, wonderful. You have improved. You have accomplished something.

Now you are 50% better. Used to get C's. Now you are getting A's. And then that becomes our new baseline. So now we used to get 50 likes. Now we get 75 likes. Now 75 likes is our new baseline. And our brain says 70% of 5 likes isn't good enough anymore.

We need to be progressing. So the reason that all of this stuff is so addictive is because it activates all of the things that we care about. See, this is what a lot of people don't understand. is that if you have all these like productivity influencers or you have tiger parents who are telling you, hey, you need to accomplish more, you need to work harder, you need to distinguish yourself, the more that tiger parents tell their kids you need to be something in life, that activates the part of your brain that wants to be something. And what they're actually doing is making you more vulnerable to achievement in video games. Because if you had a parent who is never happy with what you did, and they said, you need to be more, you need to be more. You to be more. You need to be more. And even though you're trying to accomplish, trying to accomplish, trying to accomplish, your brain never gets the reward. But your brain values accomplishment. They instill their values into you of accomplish something. The game comes along and says, hey, buddy, good job. You accomplished something today. Look at you. You've logged in for 363 days in a row. Good job. So the very values that we are being indoctrinated, with by all of the people who tell us to be better and productive are the things that video games and social media are actually satisfying. So how do you develop a balance? It's really simple,

but very difficult. Start to satisfy your brain in the real world. So whatever it is that you love the most about a video game, what you love the most about social media, learn how to do that in the real world. Now, here's why that's why that's. hard because the dopaminergic signal that you get from the real world is going to be way lower and with a way higher effort than in the video game. Does that make sense? So it's harder to get that level of achievement. You can beat Monster Hunter Wilds within, I don't know, maybe 50, 60 hours.

I have no idea. But like graduating from Harvard is like a four-year investment. Does that make sense? And this is why everyone goes into video games because it's kind of like, okay, you've got two options. You can go to your sink for a glass of water, or you can walk 15 miles for a glass of water, which one are you going to choose?

So our brain automatically chooses the sink, because it's easier. The reward is the same. The amount of dopamine release that we get in the brain is comparable. Does that make sense? So the reason that it's hard to balance is because balance is chasing inefficiency. You have to do things that are not rewarding,

and then it becomes really hard, because how do you do things that are not rewarding? There's no behavioral reinforcement. Or the behavioral reinforcement is so low. So what I would recommend for anyone who's trying to balance is think about what you get the most from this activity. And oftentimes, if we're talking about something like social media, what we get the most is, oh, my God, I get to take a break from my day.

I get to take a break. This is the hardest thing. The reason that video games and social media are so damn addictive is because they allow us to take a break from real life. So then the question becomes really simple. How can I, in any way, shape, or form satisfy whatever I'm getting from the video game or from social media in the real world? And it's not going to be equivalent. You're not going to feel the same.

It's not going to be anywhere near at the beginning. But balance is built up over time. Try to do whatever it is in the real world. If you like taking a break, I would say go for a walk. Right. Take a break outside of technology. If you enjoy the feeling of dumpstering nobs, this is what's so hard, you know, do something that is competitive in dumpster nobs, IRL.

But that's hard. So what you all need to understand is that you have a choice. You have a choice between things that are easy or things that are balanced. if you want balance, you're going to have to pay for it. And the problem isn't that, like, you know, the problem is we're not willing to pay the price for balance. And so if you want to do something, and it's crazy, like I've been kind of doing this myself even.

And it's amazing, like, once things start to pick up, how easy it becomes. So this is the other thing that I want you all to understand. If you start engaging in healthier activities, especially for the first four to six hours of the morning. So what I would say is stay the hell off of your device for the first four to six hours of the morning. Four hours ideally. One hour is great.

Four hours is really good. And then people say, but I have to check my email when I wake up first thing in the morning because I need to know at 8 a.m. What's going on at work? And then I say, if you need to check on what's going on at work at 8 a.m., you should wake up at 4. Easy. Give yourself four hours. So this does a couple of important things. The first thing that it does is when we wake up in the morning, our dopamine stores are full.

And so whatever we do early in the morning will release more dopamine because we've got a bunch of it. When we release more dopamine, this does a couple things. Not only will we find it more enjoyable, but you will crave it tomorrow. You will reinforce that behavior tomorrow. The problem right now is that when we dump all of our dopamine, when we wake up first thing in the morning and we browse our phone for like an hour and a half, we dump all our dopamine. then there's none left over to create cravings in behavioral reinforcement or healthy behaviors. I don't know if this kind of makes sense,

but like we literally have a currency that the more we spend that currency, the more we will crave that whatever we're doing. And that currency is dopamine. If we exhaust it right at the beginning, it's going to be really hard to develop balance. So balance involves, first of all, recognizing what is it that I get from this

and trying to duplicate it? And secondly, being very careful about the sequence of events. It's not just do it every day. It is do it before you use any technology. And do it as much as you can before you use any technology. If you stick with this for a while, which is going to be hard. If you stick with it, you will start to notice that your natural motivation towards the video game or the social media will decline. Because your brain will naturally be behaviorally reinforced towards healthy behaviors.

And the more you move towards that, the more balance you'll find. Does that make sense? The finite dopamine. Yeah, I'm going to, let me see if I can pull this up. Okay. Nucleus accumbens, dopamine and the regulation of effort and food seeking behavior, implications for studies of natural motivation, psychiatry, and drug abuse. Boom, let's take a look.

Okay. So, this is a study that basically is looking at, I don't know if this is exactly what this one says, but there's like a bazillion of these papers. I don't know, no, no, no, no, no. I have a bazillion of these papers, and I don't know. which one has the experiment I'm looking for, but this is close enough. So basically what they do is they look at when there's a barrier that has four pellets, and you can get two pellets for free.

And when there's a barrier that has four pellets versus zero pellets, when there's four pellets over here and two pellets over here, what we see is that the mouse's behavior is very different. So if I have to overcome an obstacle to get a greater reward, versus no obstacle but lower reward. So low effort, low reward versus high effort, high reward. When you have dopamine depleted mice or dopamine deficient mice, they become lazy fuckers. And when you have dopamine, you can deplete a mouse's dopamine levels, by the way.

So here's the key thing. See, when we have a dopamine depleted state, we will choose the low effort, low reward option. And when we have a high dopaminergic state, we will. choose the high effort, high reward option. And so what everyone misses, everyone's like, how do I find motivation? How do I find discipline? How do I, you know, why do I just all do this easy, easy stuff?

And it's not that this is what we got to understand. It is not that you are lazy. It is that the technology that you are using depletes your dopamine level and makes it difficult or impossible for you to choose high reward, high effort options. Because here's what happens. When we have plenty of dopamine and we engage in a high effort thing, there's plenty of dopamine that we then release. So when I climb to the top of a mountain, I feel great. And this is the other really interesting thing, is that the amount of effort that we put in increases the amount of dopamine we receive. How many times do we wipe in Dark Souls on a boss? 200. Why do we keep playing? Because the last time I wiped, 50 times and I won, it felt so good. So if you understand how your dopaminergic circuitry works,

you can reshape your life to be easy. All of the things that you wish you would do, you will start to want to do. All you need to do is understand the dopaminergic circuitry and shape it in the right way. So if you don't spend your dopamine at all, it'll start, if you don't spend your dopamine, it'll start leaking out with whatever you're doing anyway.

That's what's really cool about it. it. So you know, like, all these people who enjoy doing healthy things, and you're like, how the hell, how the hell do you enjoy doing healthy things? People are like, yeah, I enjoy taking a walk, like, I enjoy going to yoga, like, I really find it fulfilling. You're like, what the hell is going on? What is going on? And when these people do not engage in dopaminergic activity, then they have so much dopamine that it starts leaking out with, like, regular stuff. There's a big nuance there that I'm missing, which is a lot of this is mediated by serotonin, but that's conversation for different day.

There's a dopamine video there. There's a great video that we did that talks about dopamine versus serotonin as well, which y'all should look at. Thanks for joining us today. We're here to help you understand your mind and live a better life. If you enjoy the conversation,

be sure to subscribe. Until next time, take care of yourselves and each other. This episode is brought to you by CarMax. Want to buy a car the easy way? Start at CarMax. Want to browse with confidence? Get pre-qualified with no impact on your credit score and shop within your budget. From luxury to family rides,

CarMax has options for almost every price range, including over 25,000 cars under $25,000. Want to get started? Head to CarMax.com for details and get pre-qualified today. Want to drive? CarMax. Ambition comes in all shapes and sizes. At First Citizens Bank, we're fit for your ambitions, whatever shape they may take.

Whether you're planning for today or tomorrow, we've got the flexibility and know-how to help you reach your goals. Because we're built for what you're building. First Citizens Bank, fit for your ambition. Learn more at firstcitizens.com slash ambition.