Penelope’s is a little mom and pop breakfast and lunch place here in town.  The building is small and old, with mismatched booths and tables and kitschy items on the walls and counters.  The place is packed for breakfast, people signing themselves in to wait for a table and finding a place to sit or stand out of the way.  The servers bustle between tables, juggling multiple plates on their arms, having short conversations with their customers, refilling coffee in between delivering orders.  There’s an energy in the building, with lots of conversation and laughter.  A delightful place to be.

Today I made it a point to look around the room and really pay attention to what was going on.  A mom was reading a book to their toddler, families with multi-generations were having conversations, someone was laughing with a friend.  But something was missing and when I realized what it was, I actually had to look around again just to make sure.  I know you won’t believe this but NOBODY in the room was looking at any type of  technology.  There were no cell phones, no iPads, no ear buds, nothing.  There was nothing but conversation, laughter and eating.

I actually teared up.  It was so – old school.  So wholesome.  So community.  So refreshing.  And that tearing up brought about an awesome feeling deep inside and just I laughed out loud.  On top of the flavor of the delicious cinnamon French toast and REAL bacon I was eating, it was an almost overwhelming dopamine rush. But why?  Why, in this age of being tethered to technology 24 hours a day every day was nobody using any in this unassuming little restaurant?

Well, it seems we can get our dopamine fix in a lot of natural ways.  Great food and social interactions are two of those ways.  Did they just happen to take the place of or override the need for technology this morning?  Was the anticipation of the great food and energy enough to keep people from even getting their phones out this morning?  I noticed the same thing last night.  Again, great food, wine and conversation so that when I looked around, I saw no technology.

Now, I’m not saying technology is bad, but I read a couple of scientific articles out of Harvard and the University of Pittsburgh and their authors who talked about how those lovely little devices, that in themselves aren’t bad,  contain some social media and THAT’S where the dopamine comes in.

I know that social media is addictive.  There’s something about waiting to see people respond to something you say or a picture you put up that is literally addictive.  And apparently there are programmers who manipulate social media to the point that they can make your dopamine release when they want it to.  Yes, social media is manipulating you.  One of the examples was that on instagram, programmers can do something where they hold back responses to make your brain anxious that nobody has responded and then they’ll lump all the responses together to release the dopamine.  It’s very similar to a drug or gambling addiction.

My thought process of course takes me to kids and school.  Teachers report that even when they take phones away from high schoolers, they’re still distracted because anxiety kicks in.  They’re separated from their addiction.  There’s even something called a  phantom buzz where people think they feel their phone buzzing.  Does this scare anyone else?  And education insists on using more and more technology.  And we see more and more behavioral issues and less and less engagement.  Does anyone else see a correlation?

So what do we do to replace dopamine activating technology with?  Well, based on what I saw this morning, perhaps it’s great food and social interaction.  And in our schools?  Well, we would have to think about things a little differently, perhaps.  It would have to begin in our homes – or maybe not begin at all.  After all, do we really need something else we can become addicted to?  Especially if you can get your dopamine over breakfast instead.