World, that transformed into scrolling

 For some time now, a certain thought has been lingering somewhere in my mind—something I couldn't quite put into words, but today I will try to pour it out here on the blog.

The world I grew up in has ceased to exist. Sometimes I wonder if putting forward such a thesis is a symptom of a midlife crisis, or if it is perhaps the result of observation and a conclusion drawn from analyzing that observation. For the purpose of this post, however, I will lean toward the latter.

I remember, as many of you probably do, dear readers, a time when the need to find information resulted in a visit to the library, and writing a paper or an essay was paid for with hours of bending over heavy volumes of encyclopedias or other source materials. These materials had to be read, understood, conclusions had to be drawn, and then poured onto paper in an intelligible way.

I also remember times when building relationships required physical interaction with another person. Not infrequently, such interaction was accompanied by emotions that were not positive, such as uncertainty. However, this was an obligatory cost that we agreed to bear in order to achieve the goal of building a lasting relationship.

Today, we are in a completely different world.

The world in 2026 does not require great effort from us to achieve a desired effect. The development of technology has had a huge impact on this fact. When preparing an essay or a paper on any topic today, the fruit of the thought of great civilizations is right at our fingertips. A properly phrased query is enough to immediately receive an answer along with access to source materials. It is similar with building relationships. You don't really need physical interaction anymore. We can meet people from the other side of the world without having to leave the house.

I am an advocate of technological progress, so I am very glad that what used to be globally unavailable is common today. I think that the development of technology naturally levels out the inequalities that might have existed before its rise.

Technology, as I once wrote in another post, is merely a tool in our hands, and the way we use it truly depends on ourselves.

Yet, there is a cost to this massive technological progress that I haven't written about before.

That cost is a change in the way our brains function.

I am not a neurobiologist, nor do I know much about how the brain works. Therefore, the theses in this post are merely my guesswork driven by observation and deduction. Perhaps accurate, perhaps not. In this regard, I rely on my intuition.

In today's era of "scrolling" through reality, we condition our brains to short bursts of dopamine. We teach them that demanding activities, such as analyzing a book we've read, cost a lot of strength—incomparably more than the dopamine provided by "reels" or other social media platforms. The brain draws a simple conclusion from this: it is better to look for this short, dopamine-fueled content. If something is monotonous, static, and additionally stretched over time, it is not attractive. Not enough to invest in it again. This is not surprising, since the brain, from the very beginning of its existence, was tasked with analyzing situations, drawing conclusions, and managing energy in such a way as to achieve goals with the least amount of effort.

I myself once struggled with how we were programmed by nature. This happened when I decided to start my adventure with running. In the beginning, there wasn't a single day when I didn't ask myself questions questioning the validity of my actions. Today, being a bit more experienced in this matter, I know that it was my brain trying to dissuade me from the plan of expending any energy. However, I learned how to react to this, and today I can keep on running (though let's call it, by convention, a faster relocation of overweight in order to deliver dopamine to the body in a natural way—this out of respect for real runners).

Since we come to the conclusion that the brain is lazy and saves energy, we can also, in a way, venture to say that years of such operation affect the decision-making centers in our brains. Long-term thought processes are displaced by stimuli in the form of emotions and impulses. Instead of thinking through our decisions, we act emotionally and on the spur of the moment.

Now I am getting to the core of my post.

If social media feeds on (and feeds us) conflict because it generates reach and is characterized by drama and dynamics (much like the several-second videos we scroll through so often), then this highly dynamic picture of the world makes us start looking for dynamics and drama in real life as well.

This also has an impact on politics. I have a feeling that politics used to be more stable and predictable. More rational. Today, at times, I find it hard to believe that seemingly stable democracies elect people to power who appear to be complete imbeciles, and whose statements regarding their worldview insult human intelligence. I couldn't crack this puzzle until I started connecting the rapid rise in popularity of social media platforms with the popularity of populist politicians. Then it hit me, and I understood that our overstimulated brains are starting to function differently, steering us toward quick and simple solutions. Unfortunately, there are no simple formulas for complicated problems.

I have a feeling that if we do not confront the long-term impact of these dopamine boosters on our reality, we will keep drifting toward a civilizational collapse.

I leave you, dear readers, with this somewhat gloomy thesis.

And I wish everyone to put their brains to some hard work.