[acituan]

> You can get a big dopamine hit from meditation or as a response to stress but you don’t see kids running to Buddhist monasteries in droves or rushing to the stress of public speaking.

Dopamine obviously is a shorthand for a more complex psychological phenomena. While having their own failure modes, meditation or public speaking are not entirely ego-syntonic endeavors, there is a continuous contact with reality that puts your identity into question. Whereas social media has a near perfect psychological profile on its users and manufactures a purpose built personal “reality” that fits with their self concept - however dysfunctional it may be. There may be still frustration but it is still conforming to the user, because the challenge is optimized to drive engagement, not to make the person a better person through contact with reality.