The Low Effort High Reward Paradox

We live in an age dominated by screen time, which generally is a low effort high reward activity. Technology advances so fast that we have not been able to keep up with how to regulate and manage our time on the internet, with social media, AI, video games, etc. On a side note, the internet also has no moral code; people can put what they want out there with little oversight or regulation. That is unsettling and potentially harmful.

This is especially relevant to children and adolescents who are not mature and struggle more to use these resources in safe and healthy ways.

As adults, it is challenging to help them manage as screens and internet access are ubiquitous, and because of how quickly anybody, especially under 18-year-olds, can develop patterns of addiction.

Here is a way to think about what is happening with excessive screen time use and how to talk to a young person about it.

Introduce the concept of the low effort high reward paradox. Low effort and high reward sound good and can be a great thing in life. Examples of positive low effort and high reward activities can include drinking a glass of water to start the day, going on a short walk, or spending 5 minutes outside to break up the workday.

Be careful with this concept, however. From a psychological perspective, a day filled with certain low effort high reward activities can be harmful.

Examples of low effort high reward activities that can cause harm include excessive video games, doom scrolling, or substance use. These activities can lead to effort-reward imbalance. This is a term that originally was used to identify a work environment where there is high stress with low rewards such as poor pay, no gratitude or respect, or wavering job security.

Effort reward imbalance leads to depression, anxiety, burnout and potential health issues.

The trap with an overbalance of low effort high reward activity is that the brain becomes accustomed to expecting instant reward in life in general. Many of the daily obligations we have, including academic and professional commitments, require greater effort and delayed gratification. In a typical functioning brain, the reward circuits will deem the efforts involved as “worth it”.

In addition to the above challenges, people who overuse low effort high reward activities tend to experience low motivation, poor self-discipline, irritability or resistance to tasks, and less resilience and ability to persevere when needed.

The dopaminergic circuits in a low effort high reward brain will not work well when faced with delayed gratification tasks. People with this pattern will tend to surrender quickly if challenged; if they even get to the point of task initiation.

Basically, they will have the sense that doing an activity that is not immediately gratifying or rewarding is not worth doing. This is called a “reward prediction error”.

As adults, we must first focus on managing our own low effort high reward activities. It is a tough message to tell a kid what they should be doing for health and well-being when we are not doing it ourselves.

Next it is imperative to limit and monitor screen time in younger kids and then work with them more as they enter adolescence in how to use screen time in a safe and healthy way.

Kids appreciate understanding the science of how the brain works and using these concepts helps them make better decisions for themselves. It is more effective to enter these conversations in a collaborative and productive way than with a focus on lecturing and being punitive.

The internet is an amazing and wonderful tool and filled with major traps and potential harm. The more we can understand those pitfalls and teach them to our children, the more we can use it for good.

It is gratifying working on a challenging project, helping others, or gaining a useful skill in the world and then applying it. That stuff is power for the mind, the body and the soul. Let’s get back to that for ourselves and our children. Let’s get focused on strong effort, best reward!