Dopamine vs Oxytocin: How Our Phones Are Rewiring the Brain’s Reward System | Tj Power | Be Well Moments

Watch the FULL podcast here: https://youtu.be/ZoyEJ0WD99g

Do you feel less connected after time on your phone? I’m exploring why chasing dopamine from short-form content can crowd out the oxytocin we get from face-to-face moments.

This clip explores a real-life dinner table moment where parents scroll while a teenager and grandmother wait for conversation, and how that habit can erode connection and leave us feeling flat later. I’m exploring with my guest how oxytocin brings deep fulfillment from human contact, while dopamine drives the urge for “more” with quick hits from feeds and alcohol. We map the brain’s dopamine pathway, highlighting the ventral tegmental area as the dopamine factory and the nucleus accumbens as the reward center, then contrast effort-based rewards like cleaning the house with effortless scrolling. You’ll hear why effort allows the dopamine system to replenish, while passive hits flood the reward center without refilling the system, which can contribute to irritability, procrastination, and low motivation. As a nutritionist and health communicator, I connect these neuroscience basics with practical choices, like keeping phones out of reach during meals to support oxytocin-rich connection.

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Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Welcome to Live Well Be Well, a show to help high performers
improve their health and well-being.
I was out for dinner with a friend the other evening and we
were set outside in a restaurantand to the table next to us
there was the parents, the grandmother, and probably she

(00:21):
was probably about 15 years old daughter.
Guess who was on their phones? Maybe the older individuals?
So the parents were sat there the whole dinner and this isn't
judgement, this was just a really interesting observation.
The parents sat there the whole through dinner scrolling on
their phones on TikTok on short form content.

(00:42):
The girl, the daughter was just sat there looking quite I guess
sad, but didn't pick up. Wasn't the phone, wasn't even on
the table. It wasn't even at one side.
So she was sitting there bored, and she was just.
Doing nothing looking and the grandma was kind of dipping a
bit in and out, but, you know, wasn't as addicted to the
phones. And it was just really
interesting observation for me to go, well, OK, there's a

(01:03):
family e-mail going on, but the parents haven't once spoke to
the daughter. Yes, Why?
They are completely addicted to the phones.
And like hearing what you've just said about what we really
want to be getting is the oxytocin and that comes from
connection. Like the dopamine, the kind of
addiction to this phone is, is completely collapsing the word

(01:23):
of connection. Because if you think about how
many times you might go out for dinner, people will check their
phones. So we're already kind of
haemorrhaging any hyperfuse withour oxytocins just from having
them away. So I'm now when I'm having
dinner, will put my phone away. Yeah, you.
Need physical? Distance.
Can't be there. So that's quite interesting in

(01:43):
the fact that just of how it's just affecting us even now with
our connections day-to-day. And because we're not
necessarily linking them together, because when you go on
a phone, you don't get say, as strong of an impact as like a
hangover from alcohol. You're not like, well, I feel
like so sick and anxious now when you come off alcohol, those
individuals may get home that evening and just kind of like in
the evening, just feel like a little bit irritable and a

(02:05):
little bit annoyed and a little bit depressed and just think,
oh, life is kind of shit. And just like have no idea that
the fact that they chose dopamine over oxytocin that
evening is actually creating that feeling within them because
our brain is so deeply craving oxytocin and when it gets here
it goes cool, I'm full like I don't need any more.
It takes us out of that deep starvation of needing more.
And that's why, for example, when you drink a sip of alcohol,

(02:27):
you scroll a phone, you never think like, oh, that was enough.
You always think need more, needmore, need more.
And dopamine is evolutionarily programmed to make us want more,
so that we always tried to hunt better, make better fires, build
better shelter. Like God put it in us to make
sure or nature put it in us to make sure that we'd always need
more of it so that society wouldprogress.
But oxytocin is complete opposite.
It deeply fulfils us, like when you hold a newborn baby, like

(02:50):
your own baby or like someone's baby that you love, you don't
think like, oh, I need more babies in my arms.
You just think like, cool, like that's a baby.
And you just feel like deep fulfillment.
And humans are lacking a feelingof deep fulfillment because of
this obsession with dopamine. And that kid will get home.
They're also being programmed from very young to imitate their
parents. So their parents are priming a
deep addiction within them for when they grow up, even if it's

(03:11):
like a 2 year old, if they're constantly observing a phone,
their brain is thinking, oh, so that's what I do when I grow up.
I go with the phone. I go with the phone just as the
hunter gatherers would have observed building the swords and
the bows and the shelter and thefires.
And it's something that really can't be underestimated, because
the only way humanity is going to solve the big, big problem in
the youth is by solving it for us as well.

(03:32):
I mean, it's just so fascinatingwhen we're kind of thinking
about actually just said, holding a newborn baby, you
aren't craving, can I have more babies?
You're kind of like, you're verysatisfied.
Yet everything around us is driving us to dopamine.
Yeah, for sure. Which is really interesting.
So how can we like, does that actually change our brains?
Like, like, obviously we know that we get kind of a quicker

(03:53):
and slower release of dopamine, but is there anything
structurally that can be happening within our brains if
we're just constantly craving this dopamine?
Like is it affecting any other parts of us?
So there's two parts to this. One is how your dopamine is
being built and then rewarding you.
So as I said before, you have this area called the ventral
tegmental area VTA and it's yourdopamine factory.

(04:15):
Your brain is generating dopamine vesicles like little
dopamine bubbles in your dopamine factory.
And then you have your nucleus accumbens just across from it,
which is your reward centre. And in a situation where you're,
for example, cleaning your house, when you clean your
house, not like super fun activity, but you do get a level
of satisfaction when you clean your house.
And effectively, the dopamine factory will occasionally send a

(04:36):
few of those bubbles towards thereward centre, the nucleus
accumbens, and you'll get this progressive feeling for, oh,
it's kind of good that I'm doingthis actually.
Then eventually you'll finish cleaning your house, a few extra
bubbles will cross to the royal centre and you'll be like, nice.
And that's telling your brain like, do that again sometime
soon because you'll feel good again.
Because our brain is just programmed to do things that are
good for us, like obviously hygienic, clean environments
advantageous to our survival. And at the core, dopamine just

(04:59):
wants us to survive. That's what it's here to help us
do just to survive. So it rewards any behaviour
that's useful for that and doesn't reward behaviours that
are against our survival like socially isolating ourselves on
phones or drinking loads of alcohol or each eating ultra
processed foods. You have that component.
Then when you look at like scrolling a social media feed,
effectively what happens is yourbrain starts to flood dopamine

(05:21):
vesicles from the factory towards the reward centre,
floods them across and feels really good.
But the big distinction between cleaning and scrolling a phone
is 1 requires effort and one doesn't require effort.
In the cleaning scenario, when you're cleaning the house, your
brain begins to regenerate dopamine in the factory whilst
it's shipping some to the rewardcentre.
So it's constantly replenishing itself and going here's some

(05:41):
more dopamine, there's a little bit for the reward, here's some
more, there's a little bit for the reward.
In the scenario where you scrollthe phone, no replenishment
takes place and your factory literally ends up empty.
And when someone enters a state where they're like, I'm so
depressed I can't bother to do anything.
And they have goals in their life, but they just can't really
be bothered and they procrastinate all the time.
That's a state where the factory, the VTA, has become

(06:01):
empty of dopamine because they've flooded it all to the
reward centre and not replenished any through effort.
Thanks so much for listening to hear the full episode.
There's a link. In the description.