I Tried the Viral Dopamine Detox Trend. After 2 Weeks, Here's What I Learned

I used to think dopamine was just a chemical in the brain. Turns out, it can make or break a life.

Coined by Dr. Cameron Sepa in 2019, “dopamine fasting” (otherwise known as a “dopamine detox”) describes the practice of cutting out activities that activate quick-fix reward centers in the brain, including “emotional eating, excessive internet usage and gaming, gambling and shopping, porn and masturbation, thrill and novelty seeking, and recreational drugs,” according to Harvard Medical School. These activities activate dopamine pathways in the brain, a neurotransmitter that reinforces reward-seeking behaviors usually associated with addiction and “quick fixes” like drugs, alcohol, gambling, excessive spending, unhealthy eating, and social media “doomscrolling.” 

The dopamine detox was originally posited as a means of “rewiring” the brain to make it less dependent on these fleeting sources of happiness by weakening the addictive neural pathways they activate, but the trend has been picked up by influencers and online communities en masse as a way to improve one’s quality of life and social interactions by cutting out addictive behaviors and “detoxifying” oneself from online interactions. After seeing this trend circulate online, though, I couldn’t help but ask: Will deleting my Instagram account really change my life? 

This question burned a hole in the back of my skull. I parsed through article after article, video after video, post after post, all yielding starkly different results for people who tried dopamine detoxing. Some reported an entirely new outlook on life, a reinvigorated approach to every interaction and connection they had, while others said the detox was a waste of time and did nothing to improve their day-to-day lives. Frustrated with these conflicting accounts, I realized that the only way I would know if a dopamine detox would work for me was if I tried it out on the best lab rat there is for my personal experience—that is, myself. 

For two weeks, I committed to cutting out all short-form content (including TikTok, Instagram Reels, YouTube Shorts, and television), alcohol, video games, fast food, and social media. The only online communication I allowed myself was text, phone call, and FaceTime, the only digital entertainment I could digest was movies, and I only ate out when I was with friends and family at sit-down restaurants. I was returning to college after my winter break and sought to forge connections with my peers instead of getting sucked into distractions; I wanted to spend those extra five minutes before class having genuine conversations instead of liking Instagram posts; I wanted my life to feel real again. I wanted to be present, to fully participate in life as it was meant to be lived. I wanted to flout this experiment as the thing that changed my life for the better. 

My expectations were high, grand even. The results? Anything but. 

The first days of this challenge were daunting. My thumb trembled as it hovered above the “Remove App” button when I deleted Instagram, but my willpower overcame my doubts and a weight was lifted off my chest as the icon disappeared from my home screen. I breathed a sigh of relief at the thought of not liking stories and responding to DMs first thing in the morning, and a smile came to my face as I greeted my roommates with a “Good Morning!” while making a cup of coffee. The sun was bright that day, bright enough to compel me to sit on my back porch reading a book when I would otherwise have been scrolling through my friends’ stories. My dimples were showing more than I’d like to admit, and I shuddered at the idea that this might actually work. 

Despite my initial optimism, though, I quickly ran into problems with my dopamine detox. While I was laughing harder than usual with my friends and able to pay more attention in class, I also found myself alone in my room at night with no one to talk to, bored and desperately craving a round of Wordle, or, better yet, a few episodes of my favorite throwback TV show. I thought back to my day and remembered the new classmates I met whose Instagram handles I declined; the strange looks I got when I told my roommates I couldn’t go out that weekend because I wasn’t drinking; the pang in my stomach when I spent an hour making lunch instead of swinging by Chick-Fil-A. My head was supposed to be clearer, but I found my mind clogged with a single recurring thought: Why did I sign up for this?

As the days progressed, the adjustment to my new lifestyle started getting easier. I got used to the long nights alone, and I actually started enjoying them. During the time I would usually spend bedrotting with an episode of Shameless, I dug through the unread section of my bookshelf and picked up a Tolstoy I’d been meaning to crack into. I started getting ahead on my schoolwork and thinking about my courses in the context of my day-to-day life. My screen time went up, but I was spending all my time on Messages and Substack making plans with my friends and reading poetry.

I still got a few side-eyes when I told acquaintances about my dopamine detox journey, but I found it easier and easier to explain the situation with each iteration. I was even able to hold my chest up with pride when I told people I would rather exchange phone numbers than Instagrams. I started staying sober when I went out with friends and was shocked by the acceptance I found when I told them I didn’t want to drink. The people around me noted that I seemed more there when I was with them than usual, and that my friendship meant more to them because it was harder to reach me through social media. I started to look forward to my alone time and would even cancel dinner plans in favor of reading in my living room with a good record on. I didn’t crave hamburgers, I didn’t feel guilty for draining my bank account on online shopping. Things were looking good. Grand, even. 

Grand, that is, until the final week struck. 

As I mentioned earlier, I conducted this experiment while transitioning back to college life after winter break. By the end of the two weeks, I was no longer missing social media (I was calling and texting people every day), I wasn’t comparing myself to people online, and, perhaps more than anything, I felt an immense sense of pride for having made it this far in my detox. This was all great, hunky-dory, fabulous, some may say, but then, one fateful Wednesday morning, I sat down in a Psychology class to find a daunting prompt written on the board: 

Discuss how social media use has improved your ability to engage with your community.

And with that question, I realized: Over the past two weeks, I hadn’t been engaging with my online writing groups. I hadn’t been on Reddit forums looking for workout tips and encouraging other yogis to keep up their practice. I wasn’t looped in on the trends, and I wasn’t able to laugh along with my friends when they made references to the latest memes circulating TikTok. Even though I felt freer, I was alone in that freedom. 

I walked out of class that day feeling left in the dust, conflicted between wanting to extend my experiment another week and redownload all the social media apps I had deleted. There was a trade-off implicit in my dopamine detox: Even though my daily tasks felt more fulfilling and I was able to be more present with my loved ones when I was with them, it was harder to make plans with them and bond over current trends. I felt left out when interacting with my peers, and it was difficult to connect with new friends without social media as a mediator for our interactions. I faced a set of social norms revolving around online culture and simple pleasures that I was separated from, leaving me feeling alienated. Even though I was spending more face-to-face time with people, that time with acquaintances was more strained without having online trends as a foot in the door to start the conversation. I was left with a choice between being alone and clear-headed or being connected and dopamine-d out. 

Upon further reflection, I realized that the answer does not need to be so black-and-white. There exists a gray area in our modern, fast-paced social milieu; though many of our interactions rely on superficial media trends and “addictive” behaviors (how often do you go shopping with friends or propose a toast with a glass of wine?), these dominant social conventions are not necessarily maladaptive. Even though fast food, shopping, and social media use are often cast in a negative light, they can be useful in certain situations—especially when they’re purposefully used as tools to craft deep, meaningful relationships from what may be initially surface-level encounters. 

I would be remiss, too, if I didn’t highlight the impact the timing of this detox had on my experience. Transitioning from a month off of school where I had oodles of time to participate in dopamine-driven activities to being entrenched in a college environment where I had stacks of assignments and a bank of close-knit friends within arm’s reach made it easier to go “cold turkey” on my social media and other dopamine-driven habits since I had other activities available to fill my time. As such, I would recommend the dopamine detox to people during times of transition where other activities are readily available, to avoid creating habits based on social media use, shopping, and the other addictive behaviors targeted in the detox. 

Otherwise, though, my main takeaway from my experience is that it’s not what you do that matters, it’s why you do it; doomscroll before bed if you want to, get In-N-Out every Tuesday night, reserve a portion of your paycheck to fund your addiction to online shopping—but do so with the intention of doing something for you, something that will bring you closer to your authentic self and the people you care about.