The Dopamine Learning Method

CHAPTER 1 — Why Do Kids Focus Only on Smartphones?

1. Diagnosing Your Child's Dopamine Level

From the standpoint of neuroscience, dopamine is not merely a pleasure hormone but a powerful "neurotransmitter of motivation and reward." It is produced in the brain's reward circuit (the ventral tegmental area and the nucleus accumbens) and spreads throughout the brain, including the frontal lobe, getting a child to sit at the desk and persevere through difficult problems. Dopamine has three characteristics: first, it is produced more when "anticipating a reward" than from the reward itself; second, when we encounter "something new," it stimulates the frontal lobe, boosting intellectual curiosity and creativity and imprinting experiences into long-term memory; third, the brain has no opposing substance that suppresses dopamine production, so we can be absorbed in what we love without tiring.

However, dopamine has the drawbacks of "powerful addictiveness" and "tolerance": once we become accustomed to a particular stimulus, its production drops and we crave stronger, faster stimuli. When a child develops tolerance to the stimulation of smartphone short-form videos or games and becomes a "popcorn brain" that responds only to big, intense stimuli, the child loses interest in slow tasks in which dopamine rises gradually, such as reading or studying, and becomes listless.