Once upon a time, a dummy was something you gave a baby to stop it screaming in the supermarket. Now, we’ve handed out the adult equivalent, only this one comes with notifications, facial recognition and a subscription fee. We cradle our phones, stroke them, soothe ourselves with the glow of a screen. If you want to understand just how thoroughly we’ve been pacified by tech, try taking a teenager’s phone away for ten minutes. You’ll see symptoms more severe than caffeine withdrawal, and possibly some light growling.
This isn’t entirely our fault. The human brain evolved to survive on the savannah, not to process 300 TikToks before breakfast. Our internal wiring hasn’t caught up with the digital revolution. We are essentially walking around with Stone Age operating systems trying to run twenty-first century apps. Dopamine was originally there to reward us for things like finding berries, not for getting 83 likes on a photo of our dinner. But the tech knows that. It learns. Every scroll, every pause, every accidental click on a bikini ad gets logged. The algorithm doesn’t forget.
It gets particularly disturbing when you see it shaping children. A generation is growing up thinking affection is measured in streaks and that attention spans should reset every eight seconds. You hear stories of six-year-olds having meltdowns if a YouTube video buffers for more than two seconds. One mother said her toddler threw her actual body onto the ground screaming because Alexa didn’t understand the request for “the green Paw Patrol song.” Another said her child asked Siri what love felt like. Siri gave her a recipe for lasagne.
Screens have become the babysitter, the teacher, the entertainer and the comfort object. In 1995, the average child asked a parent a thousand questions a day. In 2025, they ask Google. Or, more worryingly, they don’t ask anything at all, because swiping has replaced wondering. Curiosity gets flattened into content. Real-world boredom, once a powerful engine for imagination, has been eliminated. And so has patience.
Psychologically, we are witnessing what some call a dopamine overdose. The brain, when overstimulated, starts demanding shorter, sharper hits of reward. It’s not that we don’t enjoy things anymore, we just need them to come faster and shinier. When real life doesn’t deliver the same buzz, we feel bored or depressed. You might see a stunning landscape and feel nothing, zero, ziltch, nada,. Because it doesn’t auto-play the next one. No soundtrack. No likes. Just wind and birdsong, and that’s not enough to trigger the reward loop anymore.
The tech companies know this. They don’t just design for use, they design for compulsion. Infinite scroll wasn’t an accident. Neither was the red notification dot. They employ psychologists to figure out how to keep us swiping, liking, zooming, stroking. We laugh at people in Vegas pumping coins into machines for hours, but then go home and do the digital version on our phones, hoping the next post will hit just right.
Humour helps. At least until you realise the joke’s on us. You see couples in restaurants, not speaking, just sitting across from each other staring into the glowing abyss of their screens like they’re waiting for God. You hear about digital detox retreats, where people pay hundreds to be locked in rooms without Wi-Fi. The modern equivalent of rehab, except the drug is everywhere and no one wants to admit they’re addicted. “I can stop any time,” we say, as we check our phones mid-sentence, mid-meal, mid-birth.
Avoid going on FB for a while, the algorithm will be madly trying to get you to engage again. What can they populate your news feed that might actually make you log in again. You think you’ve picked your friends to follow or what you want to see? Yeah right; dream on. And all those 1,500 accounts you’re following – do you think the algorithm is going to show you your mate’s business posts? No, it wants to show you perfume because it senses you’re feeling down, and we all know how addictive retail therapy can be…
We gave kids a dummy to soothe them. Now we’ve handed them a glowing one with a camera and a million voices whispering behind the screen. And the scariest part? It isn’t static. It’s evolving. Watching us. Learning what makes us tick, and how to make us tick more. Meanwhile, we’re still trying to figure out how to sit still for five minutes without twitching.
The pacifier has changed. But we’re still the baby.
