Dopamine Kids: A Science-Based Plan to Rewire Your Child's Brain and Take Back Your Family in the Age of Screens and Ultraprocessed Foods

From the bestselling author of Hunt, Gather, Parent comes a revolutionary five-step guide—packed with practical, science-backed strategies—that shows you how to raise confident, happy kids while breaking the cycle of overdependence on screens and ultraprocessed foods.

“Ms. Doucleff might be the biggest parenting expert you’ve never heard about....Dopamine Kids promises to wean families from two modern scourges: screens and ultraprocessed foods...in essence, promising a solution to the problems laid out by Jonathan Haidt in The Anxious Generation....Ms. Doucleff promises that, on the other side, readers can discover lives full of authentic pleasure.” —The New York Times

Nearly everything you’ve heard about dopamine is wrong. No, it’s not the molecule of happiness. And no, it doesn’t give us pleasure—it gives us motivation.

For the first time in history, we are inundated with “dopamine surges” inside our brains, pulling us to technology and ultraprocessed foods like magnets—every day, many times a day. Over the past decade, neuroscientists have finally begun to figure out how these surges alter our choices, our habits, and even our moods. We’ve learned how dopamine can drive adults and kids to engage in activities that we don’t actually enjoy—activities that can make us feel sad, lonely, anxious, and depressed.

When Michaeleen Doucleff decided to address her family’s screen time and dependence on processed foods, she found that scientific study after scientific study refuted nearly all the claims in the media about dopamine and the supposed reasons why we’re so inclined to pick up our phones or raid the pantry. She took this new neuroscience and psychology and merged it with practical experience, shifting the power dynamic back to families: Instead of devices and foods controlling us, we control them, and both screens and the pantry become tools rather than burdens.

Dopamine Kids is a five-step operating manual for habit remodeling that is tailored for parents and their children. After rediscovering what’s most important for your family, you’ll learn how to create successful boundaries around screens and ultraprocessed foods; replace screen time with equally enticing activities; remove triggers that pull children toward screens and junk food; and, finally, celebrate your family’s choices before, during, and after trying new hobbies. These five steps weaken the neurological pathways established by devices and make dopamine work in your favor to get kids to want to pursue high-quality activities that reduce anxiety, create better moods, and diversify interests.

Dr. Doucleff’s research culminates in a four-week plan to create screen-free sanctuaries that protect conversations, focus, sleep, and adventure. After reading Dopamine Kids, you will be empowered to create habits that genuinely fulfill your family’s biological and emotional needs, to bring true satisfaction and purpose to their lives, and to improve their behavior, happiness, and confidence. The Anxious Generation alerted you to the danger of screens, but the demands of the twenty-first century require that you use them anyway. Dopamine Kids is your handbook for solving that fundamental problem of our times—and for teaching your kids to have a healthy relationship with technology and food.