You are living in the most stimulus-rich environment in human history. More content, more entertainment, more connection, more novelty than any nervous system ever evolved to handle. And a lot of people are miserable.
That's not a coincidence.
Dopamine is not the pleasure chemical. That's the popular explanation and it's wrong in a way that matters. Dopamine is the anticipation chemical. The wanting chemical. It fires not when you get the thing, but when you expect you might get the thing. It's the driving force behind seeking behavior, and it has been weaponized against you by every platform, app, and product you interact with.
Here's what happens when your dopamine system is chronically overstimulated: everything real starts to feel inadequate. A conversation with a person you care about doesn't hit the way it should because your brain has been calibrated to novelty spikes that no human can compete with. A slow morning, a book, a walk, a task that requires patience, none of it generates enough signal to feel worth doing. You're not bored. You're dysregulated.
The research on this in teenagers is alarming. The research in adults is quietly alarming in the same way. We don't talk about it because most of the people who would talk about it are running the platforms causing it.
What you can do about it is real and it's not complicated. But it requires you to understand what you're actually dealing with first.