15 Cheap Dopamine Examples in Different Settings

If you've ever looked up from your phone after an hour of scrolling and thought, "What did I just do?" you're not alone. Most of us reach for cheap dopamine in one form or another. These are the tiny hits of pleasure that feel good in the moment but leave us more tired, distracted, or vaguely annoyed with ourselves afterward.

This isn’t a willpower problem or sign that you're broken. Your brain is wired to seek rewards and avoid discomfort, and modern life is packed with endless opportunities to take advantage of that wiring: infinite scroll, autoplay, notifications, and snackable content designed to keep you coming back.

The good news is that you don’t need to delete every app or overhaul your entire life to start shifting this pattern. It starts with noticing. When you can spot where cheap dopamine shows up in your day, you create space for small, more intentional choices.

That’s what this list is for.

Below, you’ll find 15 common cheap dopamine examples across different settings: at home, at work, in social situations, during your commute, and before bed. You’ll probably recognize yourself in a few, and that awareness is the first step toward real change.

Cheap dopamine examples in different settings

At home

• The Infinite Scroll: Mindlessly refreshing social media feeds for quick hits of novelty and comparison.
  
  • Scenario: You sit down on the couch after work, telling yourself you'll just check Instagram for "five minutes" before starting dinner. Two hours later, you've watched countless reels, scrolled through friends' vacation photos, and compared your life to strangers on the internet. You feel vaguely hollow and irritated, dinner still isn't made, and you can barely remember what you even looked at.
• The Fridge Grazer: Opening the refrigerator repeatedly, hoping something exciting magically appears or seeking a quick taste of something to break boredom.
  
  • Scenario: You're working from home and hit a challenging part of your project. Instead of pushing through, you wander to the kitchen and open the fridge—nothing appeals to you. You close it. Five minutes later, you're back, scanning the same shelves. You grab a cheese stick you don't really want. An hour later, you've made three more trips, eating random bites of leftovers, a spoonful of peanut butter, and some crackers. You're not hungry—just seeking tiny disruptions from discomfort.
• The Cart Filler: Adding items to online shopping carts with no real intention to purchase, just to feel the thrill of "almost buying."
  
  • Scenario: It's 10 PM and you're unwinding on the couch. You open Amazon "just to browse" and start adding things to your cart: a new water bottle, resistance bands, a book you'll probably never read, decorative throw pillows. You spend 45 minutes comparing reviews and imagining your life with these items. You never check out, but you get the satisfaction of shopping without spending. Tomorrow night, you'll do it all over again.

At work

• The Notification Junkie: Compulsively checking email, Slack, or Teams for that little dopamine ping of a new message.
  
  • Scenario: You're supposed to be writing a report that requires deep focus, but you keep your email tab open "just in case something urgent comes in." Every few minutes, you refresh your inbox or glance at Slack. Most messages aren't even for you, but each notification gives you a tiny hit of urgency and importance. By lunch, you've checked your email 47 times and written two paragraphs. The report is due tomorrow.
• The Tab Hoarder: Opening dozens of browser tabs to create the illusion of productivity without doing actual deep work.
  
  • Scenario: You start your morning by opening tabs for all the things you "need" to work on: three research articles, five competitor websites, two internal documents, your project management tool, LinkedIn, and a few news sites "for background context." You spend an hour clicking between tabs, skimming headlines, and reading opening paragraphs. You feel busy and engaged, but when your manager asks about your progress, you realize you haven't actually completed anything or absorbed any real information.
• The Meeting Dodger: Volunteering for quick, easy tasks during collaborative work time to avoid the harder, more important project sitting on your desk.
  
  • Scenario: You have a complex analysis due Friday that requires hours of focused thinking. Instead, you spend Tuesday morning reorganizing your desktop files, responding to non-urgent messages, and offering to "quickly help" a colleague with their presentation formatting. Each small task gives you a sense of accomplishment and the satisfaction of checking something off, but your actual deadline looms closer. By Thursday afternoon, you're panicking about the work you've been avoiding all week.

Social settings

• The Phantom Buzzer: Compulsively checking your phone during conversations or gatherings, even when it hasn't buzzed.
  
  • Scenario: You're at dinner with friends catching up after months apart. The conversation is flowing, but every few minutes you feel the urge to check your phone. You place it face-down on the table, but your hand keeps drifting toward it. You unlock it "just to check the time," but end up scrolling through notifications, texts, and social apps. Your friend is mid-story about their breakup, and you've missed half of it because you were reading a Reddit thread. You look up, smile, and nod, pretending you heard everything.
• The Validation Photographer: Taking multiple photos at events primarily to post on social media rather than to enjoy the moment.
  
  • Scenario: You're at a beautiful rooftop bar with friends for someone's birthday. Instead of being present, you spend 20 minutes staging the perfect shot: rearranging drinks, adjusting the angle, making everyone pose multiple times. You immediately open Instagram to add filters and craft the perfect caption. For the rest of the night, you keep checking your phone to see how many likes the post is getting, feeling a small thrill with each notification. You barely remember the actual conversations because you were too focused on curating the appearance of a great time.
• The Like Checker: Obsessively monitoring engagement on a post you just shared, refreshing to watch the numbers climb.
  
  • Scenario: You're hanging out at a friend's apartment for game night. You post a photo from earlier in the day and immediately start tracking its performance. Between rounds, you pull out your phone to check: 12 likes. Five minutes later: 24 likes. You're half-listening to the conversation, mentally calculating whether this post is performing better than your last one. Someone asks you a direct question and you have to ask them to repeat it. The post hits 50 likes and you feel a surge of satisfaction—but it fades quickly, and you're already thinking about what to post tomorrow.

Commute/Transit

• The Game Grinder: Playing mindless mobile games to fill every moment of travel time, chasing small wins and level-ups.
  
  • Scenario: You board the train for your 35-minute commute. Before you even sit down, you've opened Candy Crush, Wordle, or whatever match-three game currently has its hooks in you. You play compulsively, barely looking up between stops. You miss your station because you were one move away from beating a level. You could be reading that book you've been meaning to finish, listening to a meaningful podcast, or just observing the world around you—but instead, you're matching colored gems for the dopamine hit of "Level Complete!" The second you get off the train, you feel like you wasted your entire commute.
• The Doomscroller: Compulsively refreshing news apps and feeds, consuming an endless stream of negativity and outrage.
  
  • Scenario: You're on the bus scrolling through news headlines and Twitter. Every story is designed to trigger alarm: political controversies, economic doom, celebrity scandals, climate disasters. You feel your anxiety rising with each swipe, but you can't stop. Each new headline gives you a jolt—sometimes outrage, sometimes fear, occasionally vindication. By the time you reach your destination, you're stressed, cynical, and mentally exhausted. You absorbed dozens of headlines but retained almost nothing of substance.
• The Content Hopper: Constantly switching between podcasts, videos, and music, never fully engaging with anything.
  
  • Scenario: Your commute starts with a podcast. Three minutes in, you're bored and switch to a YouTube video. That video's intro is too slow, so you jump to your Spotify Discover playlist. Two songs in, you remember a different podcast everyone's talking about. You open it, listen to five minutes, then switch back to music. By the time you arrive at work, you've sampled eight different pieces of content but finished none of them. You feel scattered and unsatisfied, like you just ate a dozen appetizers but never got a real meal.

Before bed

• The Bedtime Scroller: Telling yourself "just five more minutes" of social media while lying in bed, then losing an hour to mindless scrolling.
  
  • Scenario: It's 10:30 PM and you're exhausted. You get into bed planning to sleep early for once, but first you'll "just check" Instagram quickly. You start scrolling through stories, then reels, then explore page content. Suddenly it's 12:15 AM. Your eyes are burning, you're wired from the blue light and stimulation, and you've watched videos about organizing hacks, celebrity gossip, and someone's sourdough journey. You finally put the phone down feeling guilty and more awake than when you started. Tomorrow you'll be exhausted, but tomorrow night you'll probably do it again.
• The YouTube Rabbit Hole: Clicking from one "recommended" video to the next, falling deeper into content you don't even care about.
  
  • Scenario: You open YouTube to watch one specific 10-minute video before bed. It ends, and an intriguing thumbnail catches your eye in the recommendations. You click it. Then another. Soon you're four videos deep into true crime content you weren't even interested in, or watching someone restore a vintage radio, or conspiracy theories about a TV show you've never seen. Each video promises to be the "last one." It's now 1:30 AM, and you've watched 90 minutes of random content you'll barely remember. You're mentally overstimulated but your body is exhausted.
• The Late-Night Browser: Aimlessly window shopping, reading random articles, or clicking through Reddit threads when you should be winding down.
  
  • Scenario: You're in bed with your laptop, telling yourself you'll just "browse for a minute" before sleep. You start on a news site, click through to an opinion piece, then see a link to a product review. Now you're on Amazon looking at kitchen gadgets you don't need. Then you jump to Reddit and read an entire thread about workplace drama from strangers. An hour passes in a blur of tabs and clicks. Nothing you looked at matters, but each click gave you a tiny hit of curiosity satisfied. You finally close the laptop feeling empty and knowing your sleep quality will suffer.

How to stop chasing cheap dopamine

You don't need superhuman willpower to break the cycle. With some self-compassion and intentional systems, you can start to shift your behavior. Here are practical ways to start:

1. Add friction to the behavior: Make cheap dopamine harder to access. Delete social apps from your phone (you can still access via browser). Put your phone in another room while working. Log out of shopping sites after each use. The extra steps give your brain a chance to pause and choose differently.

2. Replace, don't just remove: Your brain seeks dopamine for a reason. You're bored, stressed, or avoiding something uncomfortable. Instead of fighting the urge, redirect it toward something more fulfilling: a short walk, calling a friend, stretching, or working on a project you actually care about. Give yourself a better option, not just restriction.

3. Build in intentional dopamine: Schedule genuinely rewarding activities: hobbies, exercise, creative projects, quality time with people you love. When your life has meaningful sources of satisfaction, you'll crave the cheap stuff less.

4. Practice the pause: When you feel the urge to check your phone, scroll, or snack mindlessly, pause for 10 seconds. Ask yourself: "What am I actually feeling right now? What do I actually need?" Sometimes awareness alone is enough to break the autopilot.

5. Be patient with yourself: You've built these habits over years. They won't disappear overnight. Progress isn't perfection, it's noticing the pattern more quickly, choosing differently a bit more often, and being kind to yourself when you slip back into old behaviors.

The goal isn't to eliminate all quick pleasures from your life. It's to stop letting them run your life on autopilot.

Final thoughts

Cheap dopamine is part of being human. Our brains naturally look for things that feel good, especially in a world that constantly offers quick, easy relief. When you start noticing your own patterns, you gain more say in how you spend your time and attention. You don’t need to be perfect about it, either. Small shifts add up, and even modest changes can make a real difference in your focus, mood, and sense of control.

If you’re putting in genuine effort and still feel stuck, reaching out to a therapist or counselor can help. Sometimes these cycles are tied to things like anxiety, depression, or ADHD, and having professional support can make all the difference.