Anna Lembke

And of course, you know, we're not going to throw the baby out with the bathwater.

There are a lot of great things about smartphones and about this kind of connectivity.

But gosh, like let's get a healthier relationship with the technology.

Absolutely.

I mean, let's just take alcohol as an example.

The majority of people who drink alcohol are not going to go on to become addicted to alcohol.

But about 10 to 15 percent of individuals will at some point in their lives develop an alcohol use disorder.

Those are people who just innately have increased vulnerability to the problem of alcohol addiction.

Hence, we've recognized as a society that alcohol can do harms, and we've made rules and regulations around how alcohol can be consumed, how it can be sold, how it can be marketed.

Especially, we're looking out for children.

Children can't buy alcohol until a certain age.

Alcohol can't be marketed in a certain way.

These are the types of things that we need to employ, the types of interventions and policies and just plain old thought process we need to employ when we're thinking about digital devices and digital media.

Yeah, that was a really touching call.

The way that I heard it is that she was pushing back directly on this idea of dopamine fasting or cutting out the particular substance or behavior that's problematic.

And what I heard her saying is that all food is problematic for me.

It's not a matter of cutting out cupcakes and cookies and potato chips.

Even if you gave me a salad, I have the potential to binge eat on salad.

So that, I think, is a really important point, that when it comes to something like food—and I think food can be easily analogized also to the technology that's so embedded in our lives—

There is on some level not a way to dopamine fast from something that we need in order to survive or to make our way through modern life.