The way twitter and tiktok talk about dopamine responses you would think everyone was posting from a convent
You can make anything you hate in a "pathology" by writing about how it triggers a dopamine response: food, sex, social media, pop music, whatever.
And because you use big words, people will take it seriously when you speak, even if what you are saying is "doing something enjoyable is bad because it weakens your moral fiber." Because you didn't say those words, you said "this behavior rewirses your brain by triggering a dopamine response."
When quite literally any form of pleasure triggers a dopamine response! When I beat someone online at chess, it makes me happy. Does that mean chess is "the same as any addictive drug."
I joke, but the funny thing is, people did used to say this about pleasures we now see as enriching or classy. Reading novels was supposed to rot your brain, and Beethoven was too stimulating and could ruin your morals.
#they neatly forget that dopamine is responsible for a lot more than just pleasure addiction and behavioural reinforcement#it’s involved in motion regulation#a ‘dopamine detox’ (if something like that existed and worked) would have you unable to move#dopamine is also involved in cognition (i.e. thinking)#dopamine is so much more complex than whatever tiktok or Twitter say#and if someone wants to break down complex behaviours to a single neurotransmitter#you have my permission as a neuroscientist to beat them over the head with a comically large object
The way most people (and I absolutely include the psychiatric industry in this) talk about neurotransmitters is reminiscent of four humors talk.