Quitting scrolling and gaming has made me physically over-sensitive to dopamine
Around 2 years ago, I used to spend a couple hours on tiktok a day, and another couple of hours gaming. I was severely addicted. I decided to quit the online world. Now, I don't use tiktok, and barely game, mostly sometimes with my friends. I still have a vague online presence. I have a very small youtube channel where I just upload tutorials and I upload my 3d models to printables. I noticed that when I do interact with the online world, like for example I play some game for a bit, or I watch a youtube video, I am then REALLY overstimulated. It feels like someone just punched my brain, im dizzy, like i'd just spun around in a circle for a while and stopped abruptly, and I feel sluggish, tired, and just mentally slower than usual. This feeling usually stays for the whole day, and it's way worse if for example the youtube video I was watching had some sort of aggressive editing, flashing lights, jump cuts, music, i.e was edited in the way that mrbeast videos are edited nowadays.
This feeling is IMO natural. If I time traveled 100 years back to the past, and showed the same content to a person from that time, they would probably feel the same way, they were just not used to this type of stimulation and so am I.
I usually don't care about this, but it is a curse sometimes. It made me basically allergic to television. TV where I live has the same, aggressive, over-exaggerated pace as any other thing nowadays, especially the news. And my family LOVES watching the news. If i visit my grandma, there is a 90% chance that news are on, and I hate it. When I visit my family, it makes me feel the same, awful, overstimulated feeling, and I'm miserable when I'm at their house.
I'm writing this whole thing cause I'm looking for some kind of support I guess. I would really like to know if I'm just some sort of over sensitive weirdo or maybe some of you guys are going through the same thing as me? I would be really grateful for any sort of comment.
Posted Jul 23, 2026, 10:21 AM UTC