Why Is The Internet So Addictive?

Story by Serenity Bussey. Photo courtesy of Google.

The internet has been around for a while, but it seems that more and more everyday it’s become a daily part of people's lives. Nowadays, it’s pretty rare to find someone not on the internet. It does almost everything. You can stream your favorite shows, talk to people far away, post your favorite pictures, and now with apps we can even do work on our devices. With these new improvements it’s hardly possible to do anything without the internet being involved somehow. Even if you aren’t on the internet, you probably have friends who are, so more than likely you’ll hear about things that are happening on the internet through them.

“As of January 2021 there were 4.66 billion active internet users worldwide,” says Google. This is 59.5% of the global population! This is a huge number, and to think that these many people are online interacting with each other is a crazy thing. One common reason the internet is so addictive is the dopamine we get from it. 

Dopamine is the brain's pleasure and motivation neurotransmitter. Internet users get small rewards, or dopamine hits, every time they get a message from a friend, interesting stories on social media, new food recipes to try… basically every time they use their devices. These very simple rewards increase dopamine production, which makes us want to keep feeling the happiness dopamine provides. So in short, friends message you, you get all happy inside, you keep texting to continue this eternal feeling and the vicious cycle continues.

I wouldn’t say I, myself am addicted to the internet, but I could be off of it a little more. When I spend too much time online I feel/become less productive, and being less productive means getting less done. There’s really only a few times during the day where I have absolutely nothing to do, so lately I've been trying to decrease the amount of time I spend online. The iPhone setting “Screen Time'' has been pretty beneficial for me. I didn’t really follow through with it in the beginning, but once I started to get accustomed to it, it was pretty straightforward and the results were amazing! After using this feature for some time, my most used apps became apps that I rarely checked and I spent my days actually getting up and doing things. 

Serenity Bussey is a 7th grade scholar at Friendship Woodridge International School.