Digital Heroin, by Design

by John Henry (April 2026)

Yesterday I pondered my activity on Instagram. I have been using AI to bring many of my current and previous projects and designs to life—from black-and-white to color photos and renderings, even rough sketches that were never developed further.

The results are astonishing, and although there is a profit motive if enough people like or view your postings, this was never the original idea. It was simply a platform to showcase my work.

YouTube was a previous platform, and I worked on many videos for over 15 years. I also have two Facebook accounts and LinkedIn.

I continue to post, primarily on Instagram, with an average of 80 views per post.

No one has contacted me based on any of the images I have posted—after about 18 months now. I know my work isn’t that bad, but I’ve concluded that cat and dog videos and memes are really what people want to see here, and the scrolling is very fast. If there is not something immediately entertaining, one simply scrolls right by.

So I wondered: why on earth am I doing this? Well, the really good posts are worth putting on my websites, which is the primary way potential clients find me. I can rationalize doing this a bit more, but… maybe there is another reason.

Let’s go back 60,000 years—or 6,000 years.

Prehistoric life revolved around survival more than anything else. Eyesight was the main tool for defense and offense—perhaps 80%—then sound and smell. When hominids were successful at any endeavor—whether killing, starting fire, building shelter, mating, etc.—a positive reflex ensued. And every time that feeling occurred, it wanted to be repeated. That biological impulse is what we now call dopamine. It is a neurotransmitter and hormone that reinforces enjoyable behavior and plays a key role in movement, learning, and attention. It is an internal reward system. A baby suckles and gets milk. It tastes good—let’s get some more.

[At this point I could add a few more loose ideas and ask ChatGPT to refine and finish this essay. For editors, writers, and wordsmiths, AI is so much fun and fulfilling, saving countless hours of work, that these folks would be very tempted, as it would result in a dopamine hit. But I am not going to do that.]

You can see where this is heading. Prehistoric man also invented deities to explain the world around him. He found satisfaction in erecting monumental stones, some inscribed with figures, to commemorate beliefs. He painted caves, left handprints, and illustrated adversaries and achievements.

Which is, in a way, what I have been doing with AI—immediate creative satisfaction. Yes, a dopamine hit.

Note that for thousands of years, unless one was at war or hunting for survival, dopamine was something rarely felt.

Let’s fast-forward to ancient Egypt or Greece. More gods and myths. The twelve Olympian gods explained the impulses of mankind: greed, love, hate, kinship, rulers and followers, etc. The Greeks spent thousands of hours building amphitheaters to see and hear their beliefs played out dramatically by characters on a stage—a proscenium.

The actors reinforced their beliefs and view of life. The dopamine appears again. They discussed politics, myths, and daily life at the agora or stoa.

Fast forward to the telegraph, telephone, and television…

The masses embraced the telephone and couldn’t get enough of it. Then television—considered the final blow at the time—created a mindless, transfixed viewer who could only chew while watching. As more channels were added, the addiction deepened. Hours and hours switching channels—a hit over and over again.

Speaking of chewing, the Russians reportedly found that by placing virtual reality headsets on cows—depicting sunny grazing fields, flowers, trees, and ponds—the cows produced more milk. Humanity, meanwhile, watching cable TV and now lost to social media, produces less—except tribalism, high blood pressure, animosity, and reinforcement of existing beliefs.

The research teams at Meta, Google, Microsoft, and their AI offshoots operate on the same principles Reynolds used to make cigarettes addictive. Attention spans have shortened. Too much time is consumed by distractions of all kinds. And we carry this drug with us everywhere we go. Available 24/7.

We now carry, like a pack of cigarettes or a vial of drugs, a handheld device capable of delivering rush after rush of dopamine. The results are many—from exhaustion to depression, and in some cases aggression or even suicide.

Heroin is metabolized as morphine, an ingredient also found in fentanyl. It produces a pleasurable high. You want more and more, and like LSD, you lose your footing on reality.

Positive results in any activity are reinforced psychologically so that you try to repeat them. A crossword or jigsaw puzzle, a race, a promotion, reading a book, compliments, goals—these are pursued again as forms of reinforcement. The more social media “likes” we receive, the better we feel about our value. There are many parallels—and also negative effects.

Random scrolling turns into doomscrolling. Like starting on YouTube to find a recipe and ending up six hours later listening to Herman’s Hermits. And the more you pursue a particular topic—whether positive or negative—the more it is fed back to you. If you dislike a particular party, policy, or ideology, platforms like YouTube, Pinterest, Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok will send more of the same. Views become reinforced while opposing perspectives disappear. This is dopamine reinforcement at its worst.

Gambling works the same way. Whether winning or losing, you continue—not just for the outcome, but for the act itself. Scrolling is designed to function similarly.

The simple act of turning on a TV and switching channels—or opening Facebook, TikTok, or Instagram and losing hours—is akin to conditioning. The corporations behind these platforms want continued engagement. In doing so, they track behavior and feed it back endlessly. It is a feedback loop of repeated action for minimal reward.

A recent study suggested that bots posing as friends influenced children toward harmful ideas—including violence or self-harm. Another example: students can provide AI systems with login information to download assignments, complete them instantly, and upload them at a chosen level of accuracy.

The integration of AI into learning raises serious concerns. Students may lose the ability to think independently or solve problems without assistance. What happens if systems fail—and we no longer know how to fix them without those same systems?

In architecture schools, students are encouraged to prompt designs from AI, then refine the results. For over 4,000 years, architects, artists, musicians, writers, and philosophers began with a pen or pencil—not a machine. Perhaps an intoxicant—but not an algorithm.

Like gambling, we are being drawn into reliance on machines to solve problems, correct issues, and shape the future. Will this work—or will we become passive participants, sustained by artificial inputs while others—human or machine—direct what remains of society?

Many believe this trajectory should stop. The question is how. And if we slow down, do we risk falling behind others pursuing greater technological power?

Into what kind of future are we heading?

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