What Pigeons Can Teach Us About Our Phone Fixation
By Michaeleen Doucleff
Ms. Doucleff is the author of the forthcoming book “Dopamine Kids: A Science-Based Plan to Rewire Your Child’s Brain and Take Back Your Family in the Age of Screens and Ultraprocessed Foods.”
More than 50 years ago, psychologists began documenting a strange phenomenon among animals, including pigeons, raccoons and rats. Although they didn’t realize it at the time, this behavior would help to explain why our society has developed such an intense and often uncontrollable need for our phones. And how devices and their apps don’t give us “instant gratification,” as we often believe, but instead trigger the opposite: constant wanting and desire.
In the 1970s, scientists put hungry pigeons into a long box and taught the birds that a flashing light at one end of the box signified the appearance of food at the other end of the box. The light became a signal for a reward.
At first, the pigeons largely ignored the light and spent time at the side of the box near the food. They wanted and needed the food. But over time, the light drew the pigeons to it like a magnet. “It was amazing to watch,” says psychologist Robert Boakes at The University of Sydney, who was among the first scientists to document this phenomenon. “The birds would spend so much time pecking at the light that they had no time to get the food.” Mr. Boakes called this behavior “sign tracking” because the animals chased after the “sign” of the reward. Peck, peck, peck.
In one experiment, a pigeon pecked the light thousands of times an hour. The light distracted the birds so much that they went hungry.
How silly of these birds!
Today, nearly everyone in America has become just as silly. People are “exactly like the pigeons,” says Peter Balsam, a professor of psychology at Columbia University. Because, he says, we carry around a device that elicits this bizarre behavior: our phones. Swipe, swipe, swipe. Scroll, scroll, scroll. Tap, tap, tap.
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Smartphones — as well as their social media platforms, texting apps and video games — can trick us into no longer seeking out what we need in our lives. We start to value, desire and even become obsessed with signals on our devices that we associate with our fundamental needs, like belonging. “As social creatures, people are driven to find social interaction just as compelling as food, water, sex and salt,” says the neuroscientist Read Montague at Virginia Tech.
Phones, tablets and apps provide a cornucopia of sights and sounds that signal the possibility of belonging, much as the light signaled food in the pigeon’s box. These signals include the colorful icons of apps, the red notification dots on top of them, and the bells, chirps, buzzes and dings that accompany them all. Even the device itself morphs into a potent signal for people.
Neuroscientists have found that the brain chemical dopamine draws us to these signals. Dopamine was once believed to encode pleasure, but a vast amount of evidence accumulated over recent decades suggests that’s not quite right. Instead, it plays several roles. It triggers motivation for and wanting of fundamental needs. It makes you want the cake in front of you, said neuroscientist Kent Berridge at the University of Michigan. But it doesn’t make you like the cake or feel satisfied afterward. Dopamine isn’t about gratification. Wanting and liking are, in a way, separable components inside the brain, he adds.
The dopamine system also identifies signals in our environment that point to and predict the arrival of these critical needs. It lights up when you see the logo of the cake bakery down the street, or when you see your phone sitting on your desk.
What many parents may not appreciate, Dr. Montague says, is that the content on social media and texting apps is a mere signal of belonging. It cannot fulfill a child’s need for in-person interactions and relationships. Instead, it represents a kind of “skeletal” version of a real social life, he says. One that can “squeeze out” a child’s real social life.
To protect our children (and ourselves) from these powerful signals, he says, we need to create times and places in our lives where devices, apps and games aren’t simply limited, but unavailable. Children need sanctuaries in their lives where activities that do fulfill their needs can flourish. For example, Dr. Montague has long had a rule that his teenage children can only use their phones in places where the family congregates, like the kitchen, never upstairs in their bedrooms.
When children have an intense desire for these products, it doesn’t always mean they’re deriving intense pleasure and satisfaction from them. In fact, these technologies can strip away pleasure and leave children with little gratification.
Cutting off access doesn’t mean depriving or denying children pleasure in life. It can actually mean the opposite. If we seek out and provide children with activities that bring them satisfaction, then we can fill their lives with long-term pleasure while also genuinely meeting their needs.
Dr. Montague explains to his teenage children how sitting in your room alone taking selfies actually hinders you from satisfying your need for social connection. “I’m like, ‘How is that cool? That seems pathetic and lonely. Go out and introduce yourself to real people.’”Michaeleen Doucleff, a science journalist, is the author of “Hunt, Gather, Parent” and the forthcoming book “Dopamine Kids.”