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Dopamine Expert: Short Form Videos Are Frying Your Brain! This Is A Dopamine Disaster! — Dr. Anna Lembke

Jan 2026 🇬🇧 🇺🇸 The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett

Returning to the show a year after her first appearance, Dr. Anna Lembke sharpens her argument specifically around short-form video, describing a cycle in which rapid, high-frequency content consumption trains the brain to expect ever-larger rewards and can leave heavy users feeling worse rather than better afterward. She extends the discussion into parenting, describing a pattern she observes of parents using tablets and phones to soothe children's emotions, and raises concern about AI systems taking over roles she associates with parenting and emotional regulation. As in her earlier appearance, Lembke frames these as clinical patterns from her addiction-medicine practice rather than proven mechanisms, and offers practical resets rather than abstinence-only advice. TechKids Foundation includes this entry for its direct focus on short-form video and on technology's use as an emotional-soothing substitute for young children, both recurring concerns across this library.

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CITATION

Bartlett, Steven, host. "Dopamine Expert: Short Form Videos Are Frying Your Brain! This Is A Dopamine Disaster!" Interview with Anna Lembke. The Diary Of A CEO, January 5, 2026.

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