Steven Bartlett with Jonathan Haidt and Dr Aditi Nerurkar
Your phone is a behavioral training device actively rewiring your brain for anxiety, shrinking your attention span, and replacing deep human connection with algorithmic dopamine hits.
Touchscreen devices operate like Skinner boxes that deliver variable dopamine rewards, actively rewiring the brain's reward pathways and destroying attention spans.
Constant digital scrolling keeps the amygdala in a state of hypervigilance while simultaneously quieting the prefrontal cortex, impairing impulse control and complex problem-solving.
While social media platforms historically hacked human attention, the emergence of personalized AI chatbots threatens to hack human attachment and replace genuine social bonds with artificial companions.