The Dopamine Connection – How to Reduce Bad Behaviour

I totally get it. You just want a couple of minutes of peace and quiet and the easiest way to get it is to give your child your mobile phone. But let’s have a look at what’s really happening and the long-term effects of what you are doing by taking the easy way out.

These days we use mobile phones to watch TV, play games, make phone calls and send text messages. As children get older, we give them their own mobile phones, which they are attached to 24/7 – but it comes at a cost.

Mobile phones emit a type of radiation that is known as radio-frequency electromagnetic radiation (RF-EMR), also referred to as microwave radiation. There have been concerns from the scientific community about whether mobile phones are safe, especially for use by children. Cancer is a particular concern, but since cancers take 10 to 20 years to develop and children’s frequent mobile phone use is a relatively recent development, they don’t have any reliable data on this yet.

There are several studies of the impact of mobile phone radiation on children. Here are some of the conclusions so far that may get you to think of a different way to gain a little peace and quiet.

1. Children have proportionally smaller heads and brains yet receive the same levels of mobile phone radiation as adults. The average RF energy deposition is two times higher in the brain and 10 times higher in the bone marrow of the skull, compared with mobile phone use by adults.
2. Before the age of 20 children are at an even higher risk of developing brain tumours than adults. Mobile phone exposure could also affect children’s behaviour. The children in one study, who were hyperactive or had emotional or behavioural problems, including trouble getting along with other children, were recorded to have mothers who used mobile phones frequently during pregnancy or after the baby is born. Maybe unintentionally, the parents are paying less attention to their child and that is the main problem.
3. According to one study, children who use mobile phones are more likely to have ADHD. The most common symptoms of ADHD include inattentiveness (being easily distracted, having difficulty getting organised or remembering to do things), hyperactivity (having difficulty sitting still) and impulsivity (making decisions without thinking through the possible consequences).

Think about this. If your child is watching a screen that changes regularly and gives them a hit of dopamine and you want them to give the phone back and sit still, good luck. As you can see, there are a lot of reasons why we need to reduce, minimise or even exclude mobile phone use from our children’s lives. From an intelligent point of view, mobile phones have their place in our society but should be given to our children less frequently. We should try to find ways to spend less time on the mobile and use that time to build relationships with our children – this will help them deal with the daily conflicts of life. As I have told my children when they are undecided on what choices to make in life, ‘family comes first’

There is a similarity between behavioural addiction and mobile phone overuse: the triggering of a chemical in the brain that reinforces compulsive behaviour. Your brain contains several pathways that transmit a feel-good chemical called dopamine when you’re in rewarding situations. For many people, social interaction stimulates the release of dopamine. Because so many parents give their children their mobile phone so they can have a break, children become addicted and constantly demand the mobile for that hit of dopamine.

App programmers are counting on that drive to keep people wanting to use their phones. Most game apps give you little wins to reinforce that you are a winner. Children want to feel like a winner, especially if they have personality traits that support this such as low self-esteem, low impulse control, anxiety and depression. Mobile phones have become such powerful and versatile tools that, for many children, they feel literally indispensable. There is now new terminology to describe this: nomophobia – the fear of going without your phone. You have probably seen how uneasy your child is when you take the mobile phone away and the effort you need to calm them down.

For parents there is also phantom vibration syndrome (PVS). This is the intermittent perception that a mobile phone is vibrating when it is not. Feel that phantom ringing? It’s a productive, restful life calling. It’s okay to answer it.