'Anti-dopamine parenting' can curb a kid's craving for screens or sweets

Studies now show that dopamine primarily generates another feeling: desire. "Dopamine makes you want things," says neuroscientist Anne-Noël Samaha. A surge of dopamine in your brain makes you seek out something, she explains. Or continue doing what you're doing. It's all about motivation.

And it goes even further: Dopamine tells your brain to pay particular attention to whatever triggers the surge.

It's alerting you to something important, Samaha says. "So you should stay here, close to this thing, because there's something here for you to learn. That's what dopamine does."

And here's the surprising part: You might not even like the activity that triggers the dopamine surge. It might not be pleasurable. "That's relatively irrelevant to dopamine," Samaha says.

When I was a kid, dopamine was the "happiness molecule".

These findings (which position dopamine as a mechanism which forces you to pay attention to things) cause much of our lifestyles to make more sense.

You keep doom scrolling not because you like it. You do it because your brain keeps telling you "this is important stuff, you should pay attention."

It's not an excuse, to be certain... but as the 20th century laureate G.I. Joe said: "knowing is half the battle."