Is dopamine the neurochemical that's keeping me addicted to my smartphone?

I'd more worry about the cycle of behavior that's keeping you addicted and work on techniques to break it than its chemical make up -unless understanding it helps you.

 

yeah makes sense, helped me stop alcohol by taking the emotion out of it and looking at it clinically.
Only word of caution is science is often wrong or superseded within a few years -- even in modern times - just look at the fat-sugar debate 30 years ago you'd be called an unscientific idiot for saying sugar caused fat!

 

Not excactly sure to the connection with gaba, but yes, your smartphone and the way social media works do have an influence on your reward system, including dopamine, since that's an integral part of that system.
But first.
The reward system is a highly ancient parts of our brain, quite primitive but quite neccesary. Getting with someone, getting a nice piece of fruit is highly essential for survival, so doing those things will lead to an endorphin rush, which translates itself into a rewarding feeling.
One important thing it also does is remember all the external stimuli that were present before recieving this reward, highly usefull because it means you'll have an easier time finding that nice apple tree or that forest full of fertile opposite sex monkeys again!
That's where dopamine comes in.
Dopamine isn't pleasurable, dopamine gets released prior to the endorphin rush, to the rewarding feeling, it's the chemical that initiates the behavior that will lead to reward (like seeing a triggering image and then going for the orgasm, the orgasm is the reward, and the image is the cue that makes dopamine flood your brain so you go after the reward).
They tested this with a monkey, a lever, and apple juice. They setup a monkey in a room with a lever, that when pulled, would release apple juice, Apple juice has yummy sugars so it's rewarding, monkey likes. The first time it did this the dopamine was released as the monkey drank the apple juice, but the following times they put the monkey in the room with the lever, the dopamine would release on pressing the lever, before the actual reward.

Now back to the smartphone story. Social media, reddit, newssites, give you new information. And in line with our primitive brains, information is important, and used to be quite rare to get such abstract information.
And there's constant novelty in play too, you can learn about this and that and the other in about 20 minutes. Now there's a few pitfalls when it comes to this inherently pretty awesome technology.
First, new information does the same thing as getting apples, because it can be quite essential to your survival to know things. And upon seeing your smartphone, or hearing a notification, you'll most likely get a dopamine spike, giving way to the rewarding behavior of coming in contact with new information.
The only thing is, smartphones and modern websites are so good at providing new information that it's a minor hyperstimulus.
It's almost like getting a tiny hit of cocaine with every thumb swipe you make.
It's entirely underestimated by most people how powerful of a stimulus this really is.

Second problem is the fact that well, you have a bunch of cool new information, lots of it actually, but it's often too much to really let sink in and really let it integrate in your conscious live. There's an information overload so that one has an extremely hard time to focuson 1 subject, 1 topic and knowing about it in great detail, and letting yourself sleep on this new information, give it some thought, build connections between what happens in real life and this new information, making it really click.
I can attest to this from personal experience. I like listening to podcasts and watching youtube channels on self improvement, philosophy, spirituality and music. A while ago I set a blocker for facebook and youtube, I can only watch youtube between 7:30 and 8:30.
Whatever I decide to watch will probably be valuable (as I only have 1 hour, if it's longer then that, I'll put it on "watch later" and just pick it up again the next day). And all the information that I've been soaking up, because for myself personally it's a reasonable amount, really sticks. And really finds it's way into practical appliance and actual life, instead of just sorta knowing a bunch of cool things I could do and maybe should do.
For me that works far better.

If you have more questions or comments let me know!

 

Best not to use chemistry as an excuse for poor discipline.

 

Yes, dopamine is part of it.