Do You Need A Dopamine Detox?- Taking a break from dopamine-inducing activities such as scrolling on social media Is the latest viral wellness trend but how does it work? Heidi Scrimgeour finds out...

The idea that over-reliance on dopamine-inducing activities can dull our sensitivity to pleasure reminded me of those passengers on the plane. There was something about the speed with which they dismissed precious moments that left me feeling like we've lost the magic that sharing photographs once held. How have we got here?

- By Heidi Scrimgeour

Taking a break from dopamine-inducing activities such as scrolling on social media Is the latest viral wellness trend but how does it work? Heidi Scrimgeour finds out...

Sitting on a grounded plane recently, I noticed almost everyone around me was doing the same thing: scrolling through photos on their phones, as if voyeuristically glancing through windows into other people's not-so-private worlds.

There was something unnerving about the scene. I imagined all the beautiful enormity of the stories behind those images: the candid wedding photo, the needs-no-words snap of a 12-week scan, the close-up of a celebratory meal; all these personal milestones, reduced to morsels that someone flicks away with a single finger as if looking, hungrily, for something more satisfying to feast upon.

A young man paused at a selfie of a couple on a date, deftly zooming in to secretly scrutinise... what? His physique, her face? What are we doing, I wondered, consuming each other's private moments, freely offered up for public inspection, to numb the boredom while waiting for planes to take us somewhere more exciting?

You don't have to be a phone addict to know that mindless scrolling can leave you feeling like you've overindulged in something tasty but lacking in nutrition. Watching strangers do this in disconnected silence heightened my discomfort around the way we use phones today, which is why hearing about dopamine detoxing felt like a cool drink on a hot day.