What four neurochemicals does Jeffrey Escobar say every successful app relies on?

Dopamine, from the instant hit of feeling like you are progressing; serotonin, from creative or skillful expression; oxytocin, from tools that connect people; and endorphins, from sustained, focused effort. Escobar, Founder and CTO of Addicting Elements, calls it a working framework rather than settled neuroscience.

How much has daily screen time grown?

Adults spent 6 hours and 51 minutes a day on personal screens in the first quarter of 2026, according to DataReportal, up from 3 hours and 45 minutes a decade earlier. The average user unlocks their phone about 96 times a day, roughly once every ten waking minutes.

What mortality risk is associated with loneliness?

A meta-analysis by Holt-Lunstad covering more than 3.4 million participants across 70 prospective studies found a 26 percent higher mortality risk associated with loneliness and a 29 percent higher risk associated with social isolation.

Jeffrey Escobar on the Four Chemicals Behind Every App

The average adult now spends six hours and fifty-one minutes a day looking at a personal screen, according to DataReportal’s first-quarter 2026 figures. Ten years ago that number was three hours and forty-five minutes. Roughly four and a half hours of the current total happen on a phone, and the average user unlocks that phone about 96 times a day, or once every ten waking minutes.

Escobar builds products that compete for those minutes. He is Founder and CTO of Addicting Elements, whose interior design app House AI has passed 1M+ downloads across 175+ countries. He is also, on this subject, unusually willing to indict his own industry.

Not a choice, a habit

Ian Sierra: Start with the observation.

“Everyone in the world is drastically addicted to technology, and not because they want to. It’s because it’s just a habit. It’s like a drug.”

“That’s one of the reasons I go back to Addicting Elements. Everything we use today — Instagram, WhatsApp, Telegram, YouTube, Chrome, Google, Spotify, Apple Music, the cloud, OpenAI, ChatGPT — all these tools, all these beautiful technologies, have elements that are addicting. And it’s the truth.”

An iPhone shown front and back against a bright orange background — The device unlocked about 96 times today, once every ten waking minutes.Photo by Igor Omilaev on Unsplash

The four chemicals

This is the framework the company is built on, and Escobar runs through it quickly.

Dopamine. “They make our life easier, which gives us that instant hit that we’re progressing. It makes us feel like we’re fulfilling our need, like our vocation.”

Serotonin. “If you are an artist and you like to design, you can use Figma, you can use Canva, you can use Photoshop to show your digital skills. That brings a sense of serotonin, a warmth.”

Oxytocin. “When we think about how these tools bring humans together, like companies, school projects, relationships, that connects us in a human way.”

Endorphins. “We’re just constantly working, busy, locked in, determined. Even if we’re not running, we are running in our mind. That’s where we get the endorphins.”

“All of this is beautifully connected. And it’s also a tragedy.”

The dopamine half of the framework is well documented. Digital products run on what B.F. Skinner identified in the 1950s as variable-ratio reinforcement: rewards that arrive unpredictably produce stronger, more persistent behavior than rewards that arrive on a schedule, which is what drives the reward-prediction-error response dopamine tracks. A 2021 PET study by Westbrook and colleagues found putamen dopamine synthesis capacity correlated with the intensity of smartphone social app use, and Sherman and colleagues showed in 2016 that adolescents’ reward circuitry responded to the number of likes on an image largely independent of the image itself. The tidy four-chemical mapping is a working framework rather than settled neuroscience, and Escobar presents it as one.

A laptop on a table showing code in an editor, a small cactus beside it — The tidy four-chemical mapping is a working framework, not settled neuroscience.Photo by James Harrison on Unsplash

Why nobody can put it down

“Now people cannot get away from this addiction. It’s too engraved in our day-to-day, and so we don’t know what to do without it. This leads to side effects, which can cause loneliness.”

Aerial view of runners spread across a red running track — Even when we are not running, Escobar says, we are running in our mind.Photo by Steven Lelham on Unsplash

The part that worries him

You called loneliness a killer.

“Loneliness is one of the biggest killers in the United States. You would think it would be a disease, an actual disease in terms of health. It’s actually loneliness, and that is absolutely devastating.”

In the interview Escobar called loneliness the number one killer in the United States. That specific ranking does not hold: heart disease has been the leading cause of death since 1950, with 683,491 deaths in 2024, followed by cancer at 619,876. What the evidence does support is still substantial. The 2023 US Surgeon General’s advisory found the mortality impact of social disconnection comparable to smoking up to 15 cigarettes a day, greater than that of obesity or physical inactivity. Holt-Lunstad’s meta-analysis of 70 prospective studies covering more than 3.4 million participants put the independent mortality risk at 26 percent higher for loneliness and 29 percent higher for social isolation. Roughly half of American adults reported loneliness before the pandemic, against a 20-hour-a-month decline in time spent with friends between 2003 and 2020 and a 24-hour-a-month rise in time spent alone.

“One of the side effects of constantly engraving ourselves into this digital world is the lack of social interaction. Because what’s the point of social interaction, for some people?”

Young people standing on a city street at dusk, several looking at phones — In a major city, social interaction is available just by walking out the door.Photo by Jezael Melgoza on Unsplash

The people who don't get a choice

This is where he spends the most time, and it’s the part of his argument that has nothing to do with product design.

“I live in a major city. I live in Miami. There’s people who live in New York, there’s people who live in Los Angeles, and they have social interaction available to them just by walking out the door.”

“However, we cannot think of ourselves as the only ones on this beautiful amazing country. There are others who are in places that are more remote, more isolated, where the only connection they have to the rest of the world is via digital. Via their device, via their computer.”

If in a major city with such volume of people you are still distant from everyone, what of the people who are actually distant?

“What of those people, what of those beautiful beings that are just not connected with us because of specific reasons, because of their lives? That’s going to separate them even more.”

A crowded Tokyo subway car, most passengers looking down at their phones — For people in more remote places, the device is the only connection to the rest of the world.Photo by Hugh Han on Unsplash

The question he keeps returning to

“What I am so confused about is this. If we want population growth, if we want economic growth globally, why are we separating ourselves from each other? Why are we not coming together?”

“I do feel that we should go back, in a sense, to a less artificial world.”

This is the third part of a conversation with Jeffrey Escobar for The Attention Decade. Part four covers what he means by a less artificial world, and why he thinks the arts are the answer.

By the numbers

Figure	What it measures	Source
6h 51m	Average daily screen time for adults across personal devices, Q1 2026, up from 3h 45m in 2016	DataReportal
~4h 37m	Of that spent on a smartphone, roughly 53% of the total	DataReportal
96	Times per day the average user unlocks their phone, about once every ten waking minutes	Screen Time Buddy; Exploding Topics
15 cigarettes a day	Mortality impact the US Surgeon General equates with social disconnection	US Surgeon General
26% / 29%	Higher mortality risk associated with loneliness and with social isolation, across 70 studies and 3.4m participants	Holt-Lunstad
20 hours a month	Decline in time Americans spent with friends between 2003 and 2020, against a 24-hour rise in time spent alone	US Surgeon General advisory
683,491	US deaths from heart disease in 2024, the leading cause	CDC

What the screens cost, measured against what the evidence actually supports.

Common questions

What four neurochemicals does Jeffrey Escobar say every successful app relies on?: Dopamine, from the instant hit of feeling like you are progressing; serotonin, from creative or skillful expression; oxytocin, from tools that connect people; and endorphins, from sustained, focused effort. Escobar, Founder and CTO of Addicting Elements, calls it a working framework rather than settled neuroscience.
How much has daily screen time grown?: Adults spent 6 hours and 51 minutes a day on personal screens in the first quarter of 2026, according to DataReportal, up from 3 hours and 45 minutes a decade earlier. The average user unlocks their phone about 96 times a day, roughly once every ten waking minutes.
Is loneliness the leading cause of death in the United States?: No. Heart disease has led since 1950, with 683,491 deaths in 2024, followed by cancer at 619,876. What the evidence does support is still substantial: the 2023 US Surgeon General's advisory found the mortality impact of social disconnection comparable to smoking up to 15 cigarettes a day, greater than obesity or physical inactivity.
What mortality risk is associated with loneliness?: A meta-analysis by Holt-Lunstad covering more than 3.4 million participants across 70 prospective studies found a 26 percent higher mortality risk associated with loneliness and a 29 percent higher risk associated with social isolation.