ADHD and Screen Time: 5 Ways to Interrupt the Doom Loop

Arthur Brooks, a professor at Harvard Business School, is a social scientist and one of the leading authorities on human happiness. I have been reading his book, The Meaning of Your Life, and wanted to share a bit from his chapter titled “Interrupt the Doom Loop,” since many of my coaching clients struggle with this very thing. 

Arthur shares that his “long-term goal is to eradicate a boring, meaningless life. And to achieve that, we need to embrace the discipline of boredom, invited on purpose and used to enrich your life.” If you find yourself stuck in the distractions of modern life while feeling bereft of deep meaning, you need to get unstuck — to interrupt the doom loop. 

In the past, I have read that we are in an “Attention Economy” and everybody is fighting for your attention because that means money. The goal is to draw you into their system and keep you there. Think about any system you are using now for streaming or social media, and look at the ways it accomplishes this. You are drawn to play a game with the interesting content; they keep feeding you new content and prizes and keep you moving forward. You watch an interesting video on YouTube or Netflix, and the algorithm has the next video ready on the side for you to roll into. 

Brooks states that we should “declare our independence by rebelling against the herd thinking and refusing to be just another statistic in the scourge of depression and anxiety; and defying the economic forces that productize and monetize every moment of your attention.”

He also adds it means “detoxing from the addictive properties of the tech we have adopted to anesthetize ourselves in a world that once felt boring – but that most definitely is not. Finally, it means refusing to give in to the anti-boredom devices – and, indeed, getting bored in a productive, healthy way, perhaps for the first time in a long time. These steps will unshackle your brain, heart, and soul to seek the mysteries of true meaning.”

Of course, we need to throw in some realism and understand that total abstinence or throwing away that phone is not likely to happen. But in Brooks’ first step in breaking the doom loop, we are rebelling against a culture that is hurting, depressing, and locking us up. 

Let’s look at the truth of what’s going on for us every day. Arthur Brooks pulled some stats from Trevor Wheelwright that are not encouraging. If you are simply average, “you are checking your phone a couple hundred times per day and spending five hours or more looking at your device. You probably check it within ten minutes of waking up and almost always have it with you on the toilet. You spend more time with your device than with anyone in your life, and you might not ‘see’ anyone in real life for days at a time because of technology. It’s hard to break away from a tech addiction, because you literally can’t go anyplace or do anything without seeing another addict using right next to you. Plus, you increasingly have to use the addictive device for almost every normal part of life, from getting into your bank account to opening your high-tech locked door or setting your thermostat.”

We should all be appalled and angry about those usage stats. Little wonder we are not setting long-term goals or making any progress towards the ones we have. Arthur is saying the first step in breaking the doom loop is “adopting the spirit of rebellion against a culture that is hurting you.”

Why Technology Is So Hard for ADHD Brains to Resist

Yet going your own way can feel scary and hard because it asks you to stand up to your impulses and defy the neurochemistry that keeps you hooked on devices, so you can achieve your moral aspirations. But you need the knowledge about what’s actually happening in your brain to help you break away. 

Scientists define an addiction as behavior with five components: 

1) Compulsive, meaning it features an overwhelming urge

2) Loss of control, meaning you give in to that compulsion even if you don’t want to

3) Continued use in spite of the harm

4) Craving, a strong and sudden desire for something

5) Tolerance and withdrawal, meaning you need more and more, and over time it gets harder to stop. 

For ADHD brains, this can be especially challenging. Our brains are naturally drawn to novelty, stimulation, and immediate rewards — exactly what our devices are designed to provide.

Addictions are actually a side effect of the brain’s ability to learn things using a neurotransmitter called dopamine. The anticipation and rewards create patterns of behavior based on wanting and liking, which reinforces learned behavior. Brooks calls this the wanting-liking-learning mechanism of behavior, and it is why someone would spend four hours scrolling memes and silly reels and then feel frustrated with yourself because you wasted time you could have spent reading a book or getting a good night’s sleep

Tech addiction is so potent precisely because it has been specifically engineered to tap into our ancient dopamine system. Brooks says this keeps us unable to access that part of the brain we need to contemplate life’s meaning and keeps us stuck in the doom loop. 

Realistically, we are not going to get rid of all new technology. There are a few ways, though, to limit the addictive qualities of technology and interrupt the doom loop. Here are some ideas Arthur Brooks suggests for interrupting the loop.

5 Ways to Interrupt the Doom Loop

1. Make personal rules that ban distractions during critical times each day. You could have a no-device policy during meals or keep the phone out of the bedroom or during family time. 
2. Set aside device-free short breaks each year. Maybe this is a week during a month that is naturally slow for you. After the difficulty of the first few days, you will feel like you are waking up from a coma. 
3. Consume mindfully and be aware of when you are reaching for the device mindlessly. Look at your screen time monitor to stay aware of your usual pattern and commit to whittling that number down each day. 
4. Turn off the cues that hijack your brain. Dopamine spikes when we think spontaneously about whatever we are addicted to. That’s why tech likes to build in the notification to grab your attention. Turn off notifications unless they are related to something important, such as a call from your child or spouse. 
5. Separate yourself more from your devices. Cal Newport, a digital-tech scholar, pushed the “phone foyer.” He leaves it in the foyer as he comes in the front door and doesn’t put it back in his pocket until he leaves again. If he needs to look at it again, he does so only in the foyer. 

Why Boredom Might Actually Be Good for Your ADHD Brain

The enemy called boredom is going to raise its ugly head to pull you off course. We hate being bored, and yet, as Brooks pointed out, we need times of stillness and inactivity where we do nothing and “defocus.” Inactivity is incredibly important for the proper functioning of our brains. When your mind wanders, you involuntarily dig into complex right-brain topics. When you avoid boredom because it’s uncomfortable, you will fire up the doom loop of meaninglessness. 

“Lean into the boredom that being deviceless in the moment brings. And remember, this is naturally uncomfortable, like exercise. Treat boredom as you do the gym – something you do most days as a matter of basic maintenance, without which you will deteriorate. Get a boredom buddy with whom you go for deviceless walks and drives. Become committed to excellence at being bored.”

So many people today are feeling a sense of emptiness and a lack of significance and purpose. The reason: breakneck cultural, economic, and technological changes are rewiring our brains and reducing their ability to perceive purpose.

In The Meaning of Your Life, happiness expert Arthur C. Brooks will show you how to push back against the sense of emptiness and lack of purpose that this new tech age has brought us. Using cutting-edge science, he crafts practical, evidence-based strategies for breaking free of powerful trends and our personal habits. It was an easy read that I think everyone can enjoy if you are seeking, and I highly recommend you give it a look!

If you’re tired of feeling like your attention is always being pulled somewhere else, you don’t have to figure it out alone. ADHD coaching can help you better understand how your brain works and create realistic strategies that work with it — not against it.

Schedule a complimentary Get Acquainted Call with Katherine or one of our coaches at the Center for Living Well with ADHD. Let’s talk about where you’re feeling stuck and what might help you move forward.