Whether it’s news, social media, shopping or streaming our favourite shows, smartphones offer us life “on-demand”. But experts think this convenience comes at a hidden cost. Diminishing our patience, instant gratification can be holding us back from reaching long-term goals.
Good things come to those who wait. It’s a saying many of us are familiar with. But with smartphones and apps offer us the potential to have almost whatever we want, whenever we want it. The days when we needed to wait for things seem long gone.
Many retailers now off er same-day delivery. We can get a lift at the click of a button on ride-share apps. We can consume news stories instantly, instead of waiting to read tomorrow morning’s newspaper. We’re nudged when a streaming service drops a full season of a new show to binge-watch.
While this “on-demand” culture offers comfort and convenience, instant gratification comes at a hidden cost. Some experts believe that this immediacy mindset is rewiring our brain: diminishing our patience, encouraging impulsive decision-making and conditioning us to prioritise short-term fixes over long-term goals.
Understanding instant gratification and dopamine addiction
If you’ve ever been frustrated by needing to wait for something, it’s probably not your fault. Experts believe that a desire for instant gratification and the pursuit of dopamine — a neurotransmitter and “happy” hormone — is most likely an evolutionary trait. Our ancestors who readily took advantage of immediate rewards were more likely to survive unpredictable environments where food and resources were scarce.
Sydney-based clinical psychologist and author of The Dopamine Brain, Dr Anastasia Hronis, says, “Smartphones and social media apps are designed to stimulate the brain’s reward system and activate dopamine. This occurs with every notification, like and comment. This can create a cycle where someone is constantly seeking ‘more’.”
Whether it’s likes and follows, progress bars, rewards, surprise discounts or other gamification elements, many apps stimulate dopamine. These apps are designed to create anticipation of a reward and offer validation – instant gratification.
“These quick and easy bursts of dopamine can lead to the brain craving immediate reward and short-term gratification,” explains Hronis. “Since it is so easy to access … it can make it harder for people to engage with harder activities for longer-term gratification.”
The long game
The bad news is that these more challenging activities are often the ones that are going to bring us more sustainable happiness. These are our long-term goals. Perhaps saving to buy a new home, meet a life partner, achieve career success or go on a dream holiday.
With immediacy culture keeping us trapped in a cycle of impulsivity, our future-orientated decisions are often de-prioritised in preference for short-term pleasure or convenience.
Perth-based clinical and counselling psychologist Kerstin Anderson-Ridge says, “I think this constant availability of that dopamine hit — things like social media or binge-watching TV — can make it so much more difficult to focus on tasks that really require more of a sustained eff ort.
“We have a weakened ability to set and achieve our longer-term goals [when being impulsive] — things like how we want our career growth to be, our fitness, our financial stability, which all take time, and they all take effort. But we’ve become so conditioned to expect everything instantly, we often give up really easily when things get a bit tough,” she explains.
Anderson-Ridge says the first step is to reframe the idea of rewards. Staying focused on our long-term goals, instead of always reaching for quick dopamine hits. “Instead of focusing on what you’re missing right that minute, it’s focusing on what you’ll get later. An example might be if you tend to quit something — a goal or a project you set yourself. It’s reminding yourself of the long-term satisfaction of finishing it, rather than the short-term pain of doing it.”
For example, online dating isn’t always fun. Especially if you mindlessly swipe through potential matches seeking instant validation. But pushing through the discomfort of awkward small talk may feel easier if you focus on your end goal — meeting someone you click with, even if (probably like you!) they aren’t “perfect” straight off .
Impulse control
With everything on-demand, delayed gratification — the ability to resist immediate rewards in order to achieve greater or meaningful rewards in the future — is becoming a lost art. But research suggests that developing the skills utilised in delayed gratification. Skills such as patience and self-control, can help boost your wellbeing in the long run.
The most well-known experiment on delayed gratification was by Stanford University in the 1960s. Researchers gave a group of preschool-aged children a marshmallow. The children were told they could eat the marshmallow right away. But, if they waited an extra 15 minutes, they would receive two marshmallows and could eat both.
When following up with the children later in life across several decades, the researchers found that those who had been able to wait — to delay gratification — for the second marshmallow ended up performing better academically. As adults, they coped better with stress and pursued their goals more effectively. They were also far less likely to be overweight.
Experts believe that having better and more well-practised impulse control allows you to make conscious, mindful decisions. Decisions which can lead to healthier choices around things like diet, exercise and relationships. It also enables you to resist the temptation of short-term rewards that could have a detrimental effect. Things such as alcohol, drugs, doom-scrolling and compulsive spending.
Offloading thinking
Anderson-Ridge thinks this culture of having everything on-demand is also affecting our short-term planning and organisation