Like many parents, Michaeleen Doucleff struggled with her young daughter's screen use. Doucleff, author of the bestselling book Hunt, Gather, Parent, followed the American Academy of Pediatrics' recommended daily limit. Yet, when Rosy's screen time came to an end each evening and Doucleff tried to put the iPad away, the 7-year-old dissolved into tears and often raged.
It became a nightly battle Doucleff dreaded, and she worried she was depriving her daughter of something she clearly enjoyed. Why else would she react so strongly when the iPad was taken away?
Doucleff tells this story in her latest 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.
Doucleff initially turned to parenting books for guidance on how to loosen technology's grip on her family and found many contained advice backed by psychology and neuroscience research that was outdated by 25 to 50 years.
A trained biochemist and longtime science journalist (including previously for NPR), Doucleff dove into current research to figure out how to dial down her family's dependence on tech and ultraprocessed foods. What she found was a revelation: Despite earlier scientific theories, dopamine doesn't give us pleasure. Since the 1990s, neuroscientists have accumulated evidence debunking this idea. Instead, dopamine makes us want.
Rosy didn't love her videos, Doucleff realized. Nor did she love the ultraprocessed Ritz crackers she begged for at the grocery store. Rosy was caught in a wanting feedback loop. The more she watched and ate snack foods, the more she wanted to watch and eat.
There's a separate, second system in our brain that makes us like what we're wanting and feel satisfied when we get it, Doucleff told NPR. Modern technology splits the systems apart, so we're left always wanting more, even when whatever we're doing — whether it's scrolling TikTok or eating potato chips — doesn't bring us much, or any, pleasure.
"One of the big misconceptions is that kids are on screens because it makes them happy and brings all this joy and pleasure in their lives," Doucleff said. The data told a different story. "In many ways, it's robbing us of pleasure in our lives."
Doucleff set out to replace that constant craving in Rosy's life —and her own — with satisfaction and joy, and she hopes her book can help other parents do the same.
"I really want to give parents these tools that actually work with these products and don't just create more struggle and exhaustion," Doucleff said. "That's how I felt. I felt like when I was following the guidance out there, we were just struggling every day. There was conflict every day to get off the screen, to eat the right foods."
Doucleff spoke with NPR about her new book.
This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
How does tech hijack the brain's dopamine system?
The tech companies have a whole suite of tricks and tools that they use. A lot of them have been taken from the gambling industry. In the 2000s, the tech industry started to take some of [these] and apply them to games and social media platforms with the explicit goal of keeping kids on devices for as long as possible.
The core of the algorithm is that the app, the game is giving the impression that it's going to fulfill a child's fundamental needs. There's very good evidence kids are on social media to try to fulfill their need for belonging, so there's this very big promise. What researchers are showing very clearly now is that social media will never fulfill a teenager's need for belonging and social support. It gives them the feeling that it is. This is the trick. It gives them the feeling of making progress. We get more dopamine when we feel like we're making progress toward our goal. Oh, if I just work a little bit harder, right? But it actually never does it.
This brings to mind being trapped in the infinite scroll, thinking, "Wait, why do I keep doing this?" But then you keep doing it.
Yes, exactly. What's happening when you're lost in the infinite scroll where you're like, "do it again, do it again, do it again," that's just dopamine. What's happening is your wanting of the activity, your desire to do the activity, is far far bigger than the pleasure you're receiving from it.
How does ultraprocessed food fit into this?
Ultraprocessed foods promise to fulfill a fundamental need in our life: food, calories, nutrition. If you look at them – it's a big class – a lot of them are skeletal versions of food. They're blatantly engineered to not make us feel satisfied. The industry has spent decades to create foods that make you crave them, make you can't stop eating them. There's a lot of good evidence that these foods make us overeat. And just like social media is preventing us from going and seeking real friendships, or can over time, these ultraprocessed foods actually prevent us from eating the whole and minimally processed foods because we don't have an appetite for them.
Some parents think if kids are bored, they'll find something else to do. We'll just send them outside and take them off their screens, and that'll fix everything.
Yes, I call this the boredom mistake. We're told by a lot of very wonderful parenting experts that they need to learn how to handle boredom. I thought this for myself, too. I was like, "Oh, I just need to go out and be bored." But I can tell you from personal experience, if you're used to being on a screen, you're used to being on your phone or an iPad, and you just get ripped away and say, go sit there. It's a horrible feeling. You have all this dopamine flowing that's telling you, "Go do these things. I want this." It's miserable, and I think kids hate it, and so they fight back. Then they crave the screen more.
What behavioral psychology tells us works in these situations is, if you're going to take something away and you want it to actually go away successfully, you have to replace it with something that's desirable and engaging and interesting to the child.
If I say, "OK, Rosy, we're not going to have screens tonight. Instead, I'm going to teach you something that you're dying to do." In our case that was riding her bike by herself around the neighborhood to the market. Now I'm using a similar tool as the tech industry because I'm taking fundamental needs of hers — adventure, autonomy, physical exercise — and I'm using that to get her excited about something off the screen. The result has been amazing. She now bikes herself to piano and soccer practice and loves being outside. Over time, you're teaching the child's brain to start to reach for and want these activities off the screen, and they weaken their desire for activities on the screen.
So you're tapping into a kid's motivation?
Yes, exactly. Science tells us this. The dopamine system is really flexible in humans. Like super flexible. We can stick whatever we want in that reward pocket if we link it up to a need. And so we can, as parents, swap out the screen or ultra processed foods for something that actually makes the child feel good and benefits them.
Can the same approach work to rewire the brains of teenagers who have grown up with tech and ultraprocessed foods?
The human brain is super flexible, even when you're old like me, but it's even more flexible when you're young. Obviously teenagers can rewire their brain. Their brain is still developing and we can change our habits at any age, so never think it's too late to help a kid change their habits.
The other thing that I found really fascinating during my research was that teenagers actually want help from their parents. They tell psychologists and researchers that they want guidance. They want guardrails. They're afraid to ask their parents for help because they don't want the parent to just take away the phone. It needs to be more collaborative. Instead of the parent being like, "We're doing this," it's got to be like, "Look, I want help with my own screen usage. Can we do this together?"
Alicia Garceau is a healthcare journalist and National Press Foundation Rare Disease Reporting fellow based in Indianapolis.
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