Have you ever been so lost in a content feed that you feel temporarily satiated, profoundly bored, and strangely anxious all at the same time? Of course you have. No matter whether it’s your phone that you habitually check at every chance, the computer constantly streaming videos, music, and podcasts with no silent breaks, or the television screen you find yourself watching at the restaurant instead of the person in front of you, modern culture has programmed us all to crave constant input.
What you may not realize, however, is that this strange mix of emotions is chemical in nature. When it receives a positive stimulus, your brain releases a substance called dopamine that makes you feel good. But dopamine is also highly addictive, leading you to seek out more positive inputs. And after too much exposure it starts to lose its effectiveness, leading you to need more and more stimulation to get the same hit. That’s why your satisfaction is only temporary and you feel bored even with the things you normally love, but even the thought of doing anything different gives you anxiety. The need for dopamine has you in a stimulation doom loop.
Normally life has a reasonable self-correction mechanism where dopamine-inducing inputs are reasonably rare. Your spouse or coworkers don’t constantly flatter you. Your favorite sports team only plays periodically. And not every person walking down the street is a jaw-dropping perfect ten in your eyes. So while all of those things occasionally make you feel especially nice for a moment, there’s plenty of down time to just feel normal. Life isn’t supposed to be about experiencing a perpetual high.
Enter technology.
With the invention of radio and television, dopamine-inducing experiences that once were rare eventually became regularly scheduled events. With the rise of the internet and especially streaming, even the schedule no longer mattered as everything you wanted to see was available with a quick search. With the universal adoption of smartphones, even streaming became passe and incessant social media scrolling fed the addiction one tweet, insta, and tiktok at a time. And today companies like Meta and Apple are eager to move beyond your phone to wear their content on your face 24 hours a day while bizarrely waving at ghosts.
Is it any wonder we’re all information addicts? Our dependency is by design. With every advancement we actually become less happy but more hooked and thus way more profitable. And with entire economies heavily incentivized to feed our worst impulses, the culture we all grew up with eventually changes.
Of course, I’m not the first person to observe this phenomenon. Just recently I read an amazing article on this topic titled The State of the Culture, 2024 by Ted Gioia. In it, Ted masterfully explains the evolution of culture from one driven by art to one successively overtaken by entertainment, distraction, and ultimately addiction. Be sure to read the whole thing, as there’s so much there to unpack that I’ll never do it justice. But perhaps the most eye-opening summary can be found in this included chart.
As you can see, the influence of the commodification of dopamine-inducing experiences has induced a profound change in our entire culture. From how we consume news to how we communicate with one another and even to how we meet a partner, dopamine culture is perhaps the driving force in modern society. We’re a world full of addicts all looking for our next hit, and things we once took for granted like film, newspapers, and dating now seem downright old-fashioned compared to the modern fleeting experiences we convince ourselves pass as the best representation of reality.
Of course, as a person who thinks a lot about investing I can’t help but apply the same framework to finance. And oh man — does it ever apply. By tracing back the evolution of how we interact with money, it’s easy to see how the emerging financial dopamine culture affects our choices.
Slow traditional finance culture
It wasn’t all that long ago that investing was dominated by big thinkers. Benjamin Graham first released his famous value-investing tome The Intelligent Investor in 1949 that is still regarded today as one of the most influential investing texts of all time. Harry Markowitz’s PhD thesis in 1954 on efficient portfolio design established an entire new field of modern portfolio theory was so influential that he eventually was awarded a Nobel Prize for economics. And after founding Vanguard and mainstreaming the availability of index funds, John Bogle continued to write investing gems like The Little Book of Common Sense Investing that continue to help countless investors today.
While Ted Gioia speaks of slow traditional culture in terms of fine art, I would argue that in a broader sense it’s more about independent thought. The art of investing is about facts, knowledge, and ultimately the internalization of a portfolio strategy that you personally understand and trust on the merits. Maybe you lean towards Markowitz’s approach to portfolio diversification over Graham’s company valuation models, and that’s perfectly fine. But the important thing is that you have a deep connection with the ideas.
To build on that, one thing that stands out to me about greats like Graham, Markowitz, and Bogle is that their fame is ultimately all about their ideas. If you’re into investing at all, I bet there’s a good chance that you’ve at least heard of all of them. Or if not, you’re at least aware of their important concepts like value investing, portfolio efficiency, and index funds. But be honest — how many of them could you pick out of a photo lineup?
Maybe that point seems minor, but the difference between fame of the ideas and of the individual marks an important step in the evolution of finance culture over the years. Because at some point it became less about thinking and more about other things entirely.
Fast modern finance culture
The transition from slow traditional culture to fast modern culture is generally marked by the deliberate shift from deep ideas to shallow entertainment. And finance is naturally no different. I mean, let’s be honest. A dry book about asset pricing is not exactly a page turner, and if you’re looking for a more exciting option a quick video on the topic is way more interesting.
Now don’t get me wrong — there’s nothing at all wrong with modern explainers of different financial topics! But when taken to the extreme of emphasizing external entertainment over internal learning, the culture naturally takes an intellectual hit.
Here’s a quick experiment. Try it for yourself, and perhaps even with your kids, family members, and coworkers. Which of these two people is more famous?
The first is Harry Markowitz whose work laid the foundation for modern asset management. The second is Jim Cramer, who is most known for yelling at the cameras about his stock picks and inspiring countless memes about his incorrect predictions.
The chances are very good that most people have no idea who Markowitz is. And they’re equally good that even your kids who you assume know nothing about investing may recognize Cramer as “that stock guy”. Fast modern culture optimizes for entertainment, and even if you watch him just to laugh at his red-faced rants there’s no denying that Cramer is entertaining. And that extra bit of dopamine over reading a boring old paper eventually hooks you on the televised junk food and drowns out the meaningful stuff.
Lest you think you’re immune to personalities like Cramer, this entertainment phenomenon extends to way more than just TV shows. If you ever find yourself falling into a constant YouTube exploration loop seeking videos about the markets that confirm your own biases, you’re also being lured by the dopamine hit of entertainment culture.
Blogs and message boards can also fall victim, as the tribal phenomenon of rallying around ideas that make you feel good about your choices while tearing down anyone who questions the local dogma has its own roots in an internal need to prioritize pleasurable validation while eliminating anything that kills the buzz. And how you invest your life savings is way more emotionally personal than most people realize, as of course nobody wants to accept that they made poor choices. So the need for constant assurance is especially powerful.
Once your search for greater financial knowledge gives way to a higher-priority need for entertainment and validation, the core concepts that are most important to long-term success are overtaken by other factors driven more by short-term satisfaction. That’s no way to plan your financial future, and it only goes down from there.
Financial dopamine culture
Like many of the items on Gioia’s culture list, the evolution of fast modern culture in finance to a pure dopamine culture was largely spearheaded by advancement in technology. The appification of finance really did a number on people.
Many phones today ship by default with a stock tracker where you enter your tickers and can see real-time market updates all day long. See green, and you’re thrilled. See red, and you’re sad.
Even level-headed and respected financial voices seeking to help people budget and plan for a good retirement commonly recommend account aggregation apps that pull your balances and debts from every source and provide daily updates on your net worth. When it goes up, you’re elated and start daydreaming about your fun future retirement. When it goes down, you’re crushed and easily depressed when considering many more years of a job you dislike. And when it’s deeply in the red from debt, you just feel numb and eventually stop trying.
And don’t get me started on apps like Robinhood that have been long criticized for their overt gamification of investing that pushes dopamine hits for profit. From confetti animations for your first trade to an interface that encourages constant personal intervention, the prioritization of positive reinforcement for small trades built them into the day trading app of choice for young investors. Number go up or down, no matter. In either case, look how easy it is to make a trade!
Search for financial information on social media today, and you’ll be inundated with dopamine-inducing content. Funny memes that swipe at popular topics. Attractive TikTok influencers talking about a company or product they’ve likely been paid to promote. Obvious clickbait about an outrageous budget claim that reinforces your own sense of relative intelligence. Crypto pumping spam galore — to the moon 🚀🚀🚀! And tweets that praise an investment you love while insulting anyone who disagrees.
We’ve come a long way from the days of the brightest minds in finance debating investing on the merits, and I can’t say that it’s necessarily for the better. While technology has certainly made sophisticated asset allocation strategies far more accessible for the average investor than ever, the new dopamine culture largely balanced all that good by reducing it to the least common denominator. We were promised flying cars, but the best minds in the world instead spend their time and resources figuring out how to most effectively encourage you to just keep scrolling.
The road to recovery
Think long enough about the rise of dopamine culture in general, and it’s normal to start feeling like the impact on society overall is pretty bleak. That said, giving into the negativity and embracing the doomer mindset is also not at all productive. You deserve better. So let’s talk about proactive, positive steps.
I certainly don’t pretend to have the solutions for everything, but when it comes to investing I do have a few suggestions.
Pick a portfolio based on its own merits.
If there’s one thing to prioritize from slow traditional finance culture, I would argue that it’s to seek truth.
When evaluating a portfolio idea, it’s not enough to invest your life savings based on whether you like the personality of the person pushing it, if it’s the most popular option, or even if it makes you feel really smart and accomplished. Instead, seek to understand how and why it works. And even when it makes a lot of intellectual sense, verify with good data that the theory reliably met the needs of other people that came before you in very different economic times. After all, some things just don’t work the way you think.
Basically, ignore the marketing. Focus on the true core of the strategy that you will personally hold not when people are patting you on the back but when times are tough and they’re following their fleeting emotions down a much darker path. A good portfolio stands on its own merits. And the truth will make you stronger.
None of us will ever be a Graham, Markowitz, or Bogle. But we can absolutely read the work of a few smart people and not just applaud their wisdom but truly internalize their insights. By doing so, you’ll be largely immune to dopamine culture in investing because the noise will no longer matter. A sure sign of true wisdom is having the confidence to just turn off every financial feed and focus on other things in life that matter way more because you know full well that your portfolio already has you covered.
Minimize financial content that entertains without teaching.
Entertaining things are fun. I get it, and I enjoy my fair share of interesting videos, articles, and conversations just like you. But there’s a limit to how far entertainment can take you, and it’s important to not let emotions supersede your best interests.
A good way to test yourself as you enjoy your favorite financial content is to pay close attention to what you ultimately get out of the experience. Did you learn anything at all? Or did you just reinforce your own biases, laugh at a snarky comment, or enjoy some rewarding schadenfreude?
Entertainment in finance is fine, as not every good thing has to be dry and boring. But when your favorite sources start trending more entertainment or clickbait than educational, you’re feeding all the wrong impulses and are way more susceptible to manipulative marketing.
So perhaps take a moment to inventory your list of favorite investing resources. And if you find them lacking in educational impact, then actively seek out new options that don’t just make you proud, happy, or angry but genuinely make you think.
Delete dopamine feeds from your phone.
If you want to have the largest immediate impact on your financial satisfaction, the biggest bang for your buck is likely found in focusing on the straight-up addictive end of the spectrum. And we all know where to find it, too. It’s the smartphone in your pocket.
Stock tracking apps and budgeting aggregators are useful tools than can do a lot of good in the right situations, but I’d argue that they can also be highly destructive to your mental health and financial reason when you allow them to consume your attention. So for the best balance, try a smartphone fast where you delete these apps from your phone altogether and force yourself to only access them periodically on a computer browser.
It may seem stupidly old-fashioned at first, and depending on your addiction level it may also drive you crazy for a while. But I’m telling you right now that if you stick with it you’ll be a happier investor.
And while you’re evaluating your financial dopamine habits, also take a moment to think about the social media accounts you follow and any online investing communities you frequent. How often do those interactions truly improve your outlook compared to how often you just mindlessly scroll? Really be honest with yourself, and perhaps you’ll re-think the value of getting strung out on perpetual dopamine hits that don’t make you any happier or wealthier.
Unplug your investments
It may not be possible to truly know whether things like smartphones are the root cause or merely a powerful self-reinforcing symptom, but it’s undeniable that the pace of society is faster than ever. That speed may have its benefits at times, like walking into a restaurant and having a great meal served to you in just a few minutes. But in other situations like relationships — and investing — where taking your time is a virtue, the cultural desire for instant gratification can be downright destructive.
Ted Gioia describes the scene of countless people addicted to Instagram or TikTok like this:
“I see those sad-eyed junkies, hooked to their devices, wherever I go. And even their facial expressions convey that haggard strungout look.”
We all understand the visual. But even if you’re not the TikTok type, what you may not realize is that you have that same appearance every time you tweet about stocks, check your investment performance for the 10th time today, or read every single post in a financial forum seeking new validation for old choices. For better or worse, there are a ton of investing junkies out there.
If that describes you, it’s ok. I’ve been there, too. The important thing is not where you are today but where you go from here.
While not strictly finance related, I still remember the day that I permanently deleted my work email account from my personal phone. I was strung out on non-stop work thoughts, pushed to the physical and mental limit, and yet still terrified of what important information I might miss by waiting a few hours to [gasp!] read emails in the office. It took some time for the muscle memory of looking at my emails non-stop to finally fade, but once it did I noticed two things.
- Nothing at all changed at work.
- I was so much happier and less distracted by unimportant things.
Whether it’s work email, your perfectly curated social media feed, or the money obsession that causes the smartphone glow illuminating your face in bed when you really should be sleeping, the dopamine you’re consuming is large quantities isn’t helping. And in the case of investing, your chemical dependence related to doing something exciting or urgent is almost certainly driving you to make shortsighted decisions.
So the next time you find yourself obsessing over account values or doom scrolling market news, slow down. Stop dosing yourself. Unplug, walk outside, and think about something else. When you’re back in a normal mindset, try deliberately working backwards from quick momentary content towards old-school slow thinking and knowledge gathering. Stop running with your head down and learn to walk with your eyes up.
Unplug your investments from the constant information treadmill, and you’ll be surprised how much happier and wealthier you’ll become.
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