I recently learned that the new trend on
social media monk mode first time I
heard of this I thought it means you
pull it over your face and start brewing
beer in the basement but not so monk
mode it turns out means cutting out
distractions and going into
self-isolation to become more productive
it's supposedly based on science and
particularly concerned with avoiding
social media because that's addictive
and addictions are not good but can
social media really be addictive does
the monk Mode work and what's the
science behind it that's what we'll talk
about today
first things first what is monk mode
monk mode is a lifestyle Trend that aims
to help adherence to live a purposeful
Life by focusing on long-term goals to
achieve those goals the monk foregoes
short-term rewards and distractions such
as unhealthy food social media and other
forms of entertainment for example binge
watching YouTube though I'd argue that
watching all my videos is a very worthy
life goal just take my word for it monk
mode is Loosely based on the philosophy
of Buddhist monks hence the name and
seems to be particularly popular among
Millennials monk mode encourages
practitioners to focus on personal
development self-reflection and
productivity and to think about what
they're doing to me this sounds
basically like growing up and in my day
we did it without becoming monks or nuns
as it were but in the past years monk
mode has attracted interest as a way of
science based Stress Management and
since its particular appeal seems to be
the claim that it's backed up by science
I thought it'd be worth looking at mic
mode has been popularized by some
influencers like Jay Shetty Shetty is
the 35 year old British guy who spent
three years literally living like a monk
in India after his return he wrote a
book called think like a monk that
appeared with perfect timing at the
height of the covet pandemic by now he's
amassed a few million followers on
YouTube where he's handing out advice on
everything from long distance
relationships to mental health the guys
basically are living cliche of a
self-help Guru then there's imogatzi
also a British guy but a decade younger
he seems to have tried various ways of
making money online until hitting gold
with nfts a few years ago gazi is less
self-help Guru and more personified
self-attribution buyers that's the
tendency of the people to attribute
their success to their own talents and
efforts rather than to external
circumstance or luck God see in
particular attributes his success to
monk mode in his videos he explains that
he sometimes completely Cuts himself off
from social media television alcohol
junk food tons of the color on his phone
for months at a time and generally
sounds like a lot of fun to be with he
believes that this level of discipline
has helped him achieve an incredible
amount of focus and claims it works
because he's training his brain's
dopamine system which brings us to the
science living life in monk mode is
supposedly all about paying attention to
your dopamine levels dopamine is a
hormone produced in the brain that plays
a major role in What's called the reward
system it's a neurotransmitter which
means it aids the transfer of certain
signals between neurons The Story Goes
that dopamine makes you feel good after
after certain activities which
encourages you to repeat them this
slowly rewise your brain and builds
habits dopamine affects everything from
your desire to move to your mood to the
ability to pay attention dopamine is
incredibly important when it comes to
survival studies are found for example
that genetically modified mice who could
not produce dopamine appeared normal at
Birth but failed to learn food seeking
behavior and would later have died if
they had not been fed most of you
watching this video probably aren't mice
but dopamine places similar role for
humans dopamine levels have been found
to rise with many activities that could
reasonably be said to be linked to
survival eating sex exercise and social
contact though individual differences
are large low dopamine levels are linked
to mental health disorders such as major
depression and other illnesses for
example Park disease some of the most
addictive drugs that we know such as
heroin work by artificially increasing
dopamine Way Beyond its natural level
but even if you're not doing drugs it
seems plausible that dopamine regulation
might become a problem in modern times
pursuing dopamine kicks might have been
a good strategy in the Stone Age but
life is good now you can get a lot of
dopamine quickly and easily and that can
interfere with your long-term goals
dopamine fasting has its root in this
idea too dopamine fasting became popular
in 2019 especially among Tech workers
and entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley if
you dopamine fast you eliminate
pleasurable experiences to achieve kind
of a reset of the brain presumably to
get higher kicks afterwards monk mode is
more moderate in that you're not
supposed to cut out all pleasures just
pick those that can't attribute to your
long-term goals this all sounds quite
plausible but the plausible ideas are
the ones you should be most careful with
so let's look at what the science is you
won't be surprised to hear that the true
story is vastly more complicated than
the influencer types want you to believe
neuroscientists believe that dopamine is
less a feel-good hormone and more a
signal that tells us what to pay
attention to or what to make an effort
with while it's correct that dopamine
plays a major role both in motivation
and in learning it turns out that
dopamine is usually released in
anticipation of a reward not when the
reward is received dopamine encodes our
expectation about the future this was
first established in a series of studies
on macaque monkeys in the 1990s who
showed dopamine activity when they had
learned to expect that a reward was
coming another extremely influential
study in 2003 found that rats who could
get heroin by pressing down a lever had
a sharp spike in dopamine before
pressing it studies on monkeys also
found that when a reward is uncertain
that releases more dopamine this is how
neurologists think gambling addictions
come about dopamine is released in
anticipation of an uncertain reward most
people learn quickly that the reward
rarely comes and stop playing a small
fraction gets hooked on the possibility
of a rare reward and those are the ones
who get a problem it makes sense to
think that some types of social media
engagement also trigger this reward
anticipation and that indeed might cause
a problem for some people but how strong
the effect is differs from one person to
the next and what it does to the brain
is rather unclear at this point you may
be wondering why I talk about rats and
monkeys when we're interested in
dopamine levels in the human brain it's
because they measure those dopamine
levels by implanting electrodes into the
brains of those rats and monkeys and
ethics committees had an issue with
Facebook's proposal to do the same on
humans the best thing that scientists
can do in humans is measure activity and
certain brain regions that release
dopamine one of those studies is from
2014 and used functional magnetic
resonance imaging on 20 participants
they found that every social media users
had more activity in the brain region
that is also associated with other
addictions then again not all the areas
typically associated with addiction lit
up an fmris don't exactly have a
reputation for being very accurate
another 2017 study used MRI scans on 50
high school students and found that
excessive social media users had less
gray matter in some brain areas Loosely
speaking gray brain matter is to process
information while white brain matter is
to connect different parts of the brain
gray matter is among other things
important for planning and impulse
control so having less gray matter is
kind of not good
in case that sounds like social media is
really bad for your brain remember that
correlation is not causation maybe the
study participants used social media
more because their brains work
differently the best study to date on
the link between social media and
dopamine used positron emission
tomography on 37 volunteers who also
reported their smartphone usage patterns
they found that a higher proportion of
social app interactions correlated with
a lower capacity to produce dopamine yes
that's right a lower capacity the
authors suggest that a lower capacity to
produce dopamine makes people prone to
develop social media problems basically
while all this talk about social media
leading to a dopamine addiction sounds
superficially plausible I found no
scientific evidence that backs it up
rather it seems that some people are
predisposed to develop you usage
problems and this predisposition is also
correlated with a risk for other mental
health disorders and then there is the
question of what we mean by addiction
anyway can one really get addicted to
social media the go-to reference for
mental disorders is the diagnostic and
statistical Manual of mental disorders
DSM for short it assigns numbers to
mental health problems
295.90 for example is schizophrenia
spectrum and other psychotic disorders
if you see a psychiatrist the first
thing that I'll do is diagnose you with
a bunch of DSM numbers I have a lot of
those in my record but I won't tell you
which because I don't want to discourage
you from projecting your own problems on
me the most recent version of the DSM
came out in 2013 and is called DSM-5 it
doesn't have any entries for addiction
the DSM instead distinguishes between
substance abuse and obsessive compulsive
disorders substance abuse is basically
taking drugs and ruining your life with
it substance is hard to find on social
media unless possibly you like chewing
on your phone so I'd argue social media
doesn't lend itself to substance abuse
an obsessive compulsive disorder OCD for
short is any kind of behavior that
negatively affects your life but that
you can't stop ocds include for example
Eating Disorders gambling addictions
hair pulling hoarding cleaning and
arrange objects especially the last
three are incredibly common behaviors
and I've seen a lot of people jokingly
refer to them as their OCD but really
it's only a disorder if it negatively
affects your life I'm fond of making
jokes as I'm sure you've noticed but
when everyone refers to normal behavior
as disorders I fear that the people who
suffer from them won't be taken
seriously the DSM does not currently
have an entry referring to social media
use or online Behavior a group of German
researchers has proposed what they call
a social media use disorder scale for
adolescence based on DSM-5
classifications it's a mix of depression
anxiety ADHD and OCD but this
classification has not been widely
adopted
obsessive compulsive disorders
depression and anxiety are often treated
by cognitive behavioral Theory sometimes
accompanied by medication behavioral
theory is one of the few psychotherapies
that has proved beneficial in random
control trials it basically works by
self-reflection and habit building monk
mode looks to me like a DIY version of
behavioral therapy which makes me think
that it quite possibly actually works
for improving your mental health if you
think there's a problem to be fixed in
the first place but social media use
isn't necessarily problematic and
discontinuing it has both pros and cons
a 2020 study found that users who quit
social media reported an increase in
meaningful interactions with friends and
family and higher levels of focus and
happiness however many of them also
reported drawbacks primarily a lack of
networking opportunities and some some
felt disconnected or out of touch with
the world around them this is to say
just because some people say they
benefit from monk mode doesn't mean it's
generally beneficial it more likely
means they had a problem that needed
fixing in the first place though if
you're watching videos about it that's
probably a reason for that so in summary
there's no evidence that social media
use has any particular impact on your
dopamine levels and neither dopamine
addiction no dopamine fasting has any
scientific backup if you feel like
you're spending too much time on social
media then maybe it's worth giving it a
try but if you seriously distrust please
don't lock yourself up in a room get
professional help DIY is all well and
fine but it has its limits many thanks
to Joshua Berkey and Michael trudway for
helping with this video any remaining
blunders are exclusively mine the
biggest problem I have with social media
are particle physicists and they'd miss
me if I wasn't around I'm sure so I
don't think I'm going to try it out how
about you let me know in the comments
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week