Nidhi Agarwal putting light on dopamine detox in terms of social media

Just like a gambling or substance addiction, social media addiction involves broken reward pathways in our brains.

Life should be dealt with in a win-win situation. And that is what Nidhi Agarwal; a lifestyle blogger (@treasuremuse) and fashion designer (Vadhini by Nidhi), with an overall experience of more than 5 years now and been awarded blogger of the year from various streams snd platforms consecutively from last many years. She is one of the leading influencers from Jaipur, the capital city of this beautiful state Rajasthan in India.

Past few months for all of us have been a blessing in disguise. We all have learnt a lot from it. We live in a world that is designed to stimulate our emotions. Every advertisement, food product and social media post is geared to give us a short rush of pleasure which is followed by emptiness and a craving for more. Big companies can leverage our cravings and make trillions of dollars off keeping us addicted. Nidhi who has been following mental health issues and their remedies want her followers to follow the trends in the real world. The latest being the trend followed and observed keenly as dopamine detox 2.0 in Silicon Valley.

She says," I hope you relate to it. You won't have a problem playing video games or browsing social media on your phone. And I don't even doubt if you could do both at once for hours altogether and not break your concentration even a bit."

Let's get into your subconscious and give you a tiny heartache. Even while reading this article, do you realise there might be a lot of productive good that you can do to make yourself one per cent better or maybe grow your side business a bit?

Nidhi with a very firm face says," Stick with me. I have a family of more than 90k people. And I want you all to be self-sufficient within yourself. I want you all to argue why? Why have I lost the motivation to do all that I want to and why do other people of the same age and capacity can do all of it regularly? If you don't have a plan for yourself, trust me these companies might want to play on your impulses to control you like a puppet. The maze for happiness, keeps you lost."

Dopamine is a chemical produced by our brains that plays a starring role in motivating behaviour. It gets released when we take a bite of delicious food, when we have sex, after we exercise, and, importantly, when we have successful social interactions.

Smartphones have provided us with a virtually unlimited supply of these social stimuli. Just like a gambling or substance addiction, social media addiction involves broken reward pathways in our brains. Social media provides immediate rewards in the form of attention from your network for minimal effort through a quick thumb tap. Therefore, the brain rewires itself, making you desire likes, retweets, emoji applause and so on.  There is a clear change in the regions of the brain that control emotions, attention and decision making. Read again. There's a clear change in the regions of the brain. Now you know why this is important.

"My profession describes me as a social media influencer. And this topic needs to have space in public. It's the idea that if you avoid dopamine stimulating activities for extended periods, you'll be able to reset your brain for these addictive behaviours that negatively impact your life.", Nidhi remarks.

So what's the science behind dopamine fasting? Dopamine fasting come under Cognitive Behavioural Therapy or CBT. CBT is prescribed by thousands of health care professionals all over the world as an alternative cure for mental health disorders like depression and psychosis. The question is how do you dopamine fast?

Step 1. Identify the behaviours that are causing you to distress impairment or addictiveness. For reference, six common impulsive behaviours are emotional eating, internet and gaming, gambling and shopping, thrill and novelty-seeking recreational drugs and porn and masturbation.

Step 2. Follow a dopamine fasting schedule. For example, let's say you want to reduce the amount on your phone, you would refrain from using your phone for 1-4 hours every day per week one weekend per quarter months and one full week per year. Start small and gradually increase the amounts of time you spend away from your phone.

Find your schedule and work on it. Identify your impulsive behaviours and the reward you get

Follow Nidhi Aggarwal on Instagram @treasuremuse, our Gen-X social media influencer from Jaipur for all those needs and wants that you worry about.

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