Dopamine Kids: A Science-Based Plan to Rewire Your Child's Brain and Take Back Your Family in the Age of Screens and Ultraprocessed Foods by Michaeleen Doucleff

From the bestselling author of Hunt, Gather, Parent comes a revolutionary five-step guide—packed with practical, science-backed strategies—that shows you how to raise confident, happy kids while breaking the cycle of overdependence on screens and ultraprocessed foods. “Dopamine Kids promises to wean families from two modern scourges: screens and ultraprocessed foods...in essence, promising a solution to the problems laid out by Jonathan Haidt in The Anxious Generation....On the other side, readers can discover lives full of authentic pleasure.” —The New York Times Nearly everything you’ve heard about dopamine is wrong. No, it’s not the molecule of happiness. And no, it doesn’t give us pleasure—it gives us motivation. For the first time in history, we are inundated with “dopamine surges” inside our brains, pulling us to technology and ultraprocessed foods like magnets—every day, many times a day. Over the past decade, neuroscientists have finally begun to figure out how these surges alter our choices, our habits, and even our moods. We’ve learned how dopamine can drive adults and kids to engage in activities that we don’t actually enjoy—activities that can make us feel sad, lonely, anxious, and depressed. When Michaeleen Doucleff decided to address her family’s screen time and dependence on processed foods, she found that scientific study after scientific study refuted nearly all the claims in the media about dopamine and the supposed reasons why we’re so inclined to pick up our phones or raid the pantry. She took this new neuroscience and psychology and merged it with practical experience, shifting the power dynamic back to families: Instead of devices and foods controlling us, we control them, and both screens and the pantry become tools rather than burdens. Read more