The neuroscience of doomscrolling and creativity

https://overcast.fm/+AA3t6-10RQo

Creativity (the flow state) occurs about 15-20 minutes after you sit down to focus on something. This requires surviving the likely self doubt and internal questioning that comes in this time. Neurologically, creativity is a mode of brain activity in which distant areas of the brain can talk to each other that wouldn't normally. Stress disables the potential for this connection, which is why intense shame or deadlines can get in the way of creativity.

News feeds are designed to pray upon our reward systems. With behavioural reinforcement (a training you can do to increase the chance of repeating a behaviour), it works better if the reward is unpredictable. This means that training your dog to sit works better if you only give them a treat for sitting sporadically rather than every time. Likewise, it means your algorithm is deliberately giving you shit content so that the one random good video drives your reward system mad.

News feeds (and technology dependent on the attention economy) benefit from our shame too. If you doomscroll for an hour (or longer), the shame you likely experience afterwards activates your limbic system and disables your prefrontal cortex, which makes you more likely to act impulsively and disregard rational thinking (ie the known consequences). This makes you more likely to pick up your phone again.

I'd #recommend it to anyone who struggles to manage their smartphone usage, and who doubts the sinister design of shorts-based news feeds (chiefly Instagram and TikTok).