Why are we never satisfied?
Why do we have a thirst in us that never seems to be satisfied? What causes this?
If you’d like to listen to this, instead of reading it, you can find an audio version here.
I have a question for you. Why are we (humans) never satisfied? Why is it that many, if not all of us, no matter how good life can be at times, carry this niggling feeling of is this it? Why is it that when we achieve our goals, we then want more, so that as we buy new things, they are never enough? Why are these feelings of contentment, pleasure or gratification so fleeting? Why do we have a thirst in us that never seems to be satisfied?
Yuval Harari, in Homo Deus, talks about how satisfaction comes when reality matches our expectations. That’s why, when after a long time of working towards a goal, once we achieve it, we feel a sense of satisfaction (if only briefly), because we’ve had an expectation of ourselves, or the world around us, and after lots of hard work, that expectation has become a reality. When we’ve grown up dreaming about having a particular job, a particular partner or spouse, living in a certain way, when it happens, it brings a wave of satisfaction.
The problem, according to Harari, is that for many of us living in our modern world, we experience a constant shift in expectations. Living conditions are, for the most part, improving; new things are constantly being made, our possible lifestyles are always in flux, so our expectations are always changing. In the rat race to keep up with the constant stream of technology, lifestyle choices, health breakthroughs, and people to connect with, we are constantly having our expectations updated, leaving our current life outdated. This creates tension and a lack of satisfaction.
In Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s famous book, Flow, he wrestles with this idea and comes to an interesting conclusion:
While humankind collectively has increased its material powers a thousandfold, it has not advanced very far in terms of improving the content of experience. - p16
This is the problem we face, particularly in our modern world. We have theoretically improved our quality of living, we have expanded and stretched how long we live, and we’ve made endless technologies that were designed to improve our lives. Yet, that thirst we all have hasn’t been quenched; many people would argue that none of this has actually improved our lives, and we are all, well, most of us, sitting here feeling dissatisfied and longing for more in life. Whatever more is or means.
Social Media’s Impact
As I write this, in 2026, I believe one of the largest factors for this is the rise of social media. Now, before I delve into this, it’s really important to acknowledge that social media isn’t the beginning and end of this problem. Dissatisfaction has existed long before social media, and it will exist beyond it, I imagine. There are plenty of factors which play a part in our existential crisis, like this, but I think social media now plays a major role in emphasising these feelings and giving them space to grow.
The rise of social media is a great example of one of these pieces of technology that was meant to help us improve our lives, connecting us with each other in new and exciting ways. However, two decades later, many of us will be aware that the grass isn’t any greener this side of the digital revolution, and that actually the grass is often pretty withered, grey, and tries to drain the life out of you when you walk on it.
Jonathan Haidt’s The Anxious Generation breaks this down brilliantly. Although there is a real focus on social media’s impact on children and teenagers, I think there is a lot of research and concepts within the book that can apply to everyone, whatever their age. The first one I want to highlight here is the idea that we humans are comparison machines, who are constantly comparing ourselves to one another, judging ourselves and our prestige, in comparison to those around us. The argument is, from social psychologists, that humans are desperate to understand their place within their society. This started back thousands of years ago, from our tribal origins. Evolution has taught us to place a large value on our social standing. This is a blend of where we perceive ourselves to fit in socially, and where others perceive us to stand.
The best example of this can be found in classic American films, depicting the lives of high school students. There is a hierarchy, warped and twisted, but it exists. There are the ‘cool kids’, they sit at the top of this social hierarchy; they are the people that everyone wants to be like, they are the ones who seem to hold the social power, and they can have influence on the social interactions and position of the people below them. If a ‘cool kid’ says they don’t like you, suddenly you’re a social reject that people are avoiding.
This is a basic example, but it actually paints a pretty good picture of the way social psychologists argue we all relate to each other. We live in a complicated network of social relations, and sometimes we have high local prestige (we feel good about where we are socially and have high levels of social power/position), but other times and in some contexts, we lack this social prestige. We feel at the bottom of the social hierarchy, and suffer because of it. It’s when our social prestige drops, which can happen moment to moment in our days, that triggers what Haidt describes as an alarm, aka anxiety within us, with the goal of motivating us to climb back up that social ladder.
Once upon a time, when our social networks consisted of a few hundred people, all of whom we knew pretty well, or would interact with across the span of our lives, it was easier to find our place within the social hierarchy and be content with it. Yet, now, through the rise of social media, as we are exposed to thousands upon thousands of people, all of whom we inherently compare ourselves to, and place ourselves socially above or below them, our little social alarm is constantly going off - we have no clue where we stand in the hierarchy, we have no clue how to climb up higher, and we are left comparing ourselves to influencers who seem on the surface to have way more than us, to be way more than us, and to sit way higher than us in the social hierarchy.
Let’s not just blame influencers, though; most of us have got social media, and we are all part of the problem. Showing off the best bits of our lives, using filters, creating illusions of what our lives actually look like, whether it’s subtle or obvious, it all has a significant effect. Through social media, we become more aware of people lives than we have ever done, the problem is we are only aware of the good parts, the photos, experiences and stories they are willing to share on social media, and therefore as comparison machines, we compare the level of excitement, joy or adventure in our lives to those photos we are seeing, and it doesn’t ever compare. Everyone else seems to be living a much more exciting life than ours. Everyone else seems to be doing way better than us. It can seem like a hopeless fight that drives anxiety levels, but also destroys any hope of feeling satisfied with ourselves and our lives.
Dopamine and the hedonic treadmill
What’s even scarier about this age of social media and mass comparison is that it’s addictive. It’s well documented by now how much time we are spending on social media and in this world of comparison. Haidt talks about this in Anxious Generation, quoting research done by Pew Research:
a third of teens say they are on one of the major social media sites “almost constantly,” and 45% of teens report that they use the internet “almost constantly.” So even if the average teen reports “just” seven hours of leisure screen time per day, if you count all the time that they are actively thinking about social media while multitasking in the real world, you can understand why nearly half of all teens say that they are online almost all the time. P127-128
This is just teenagers. You can imagine this number, for many adults, isn’t that different. And one of the interesting side effects of our social media addiction, beyond the mass comparison and anxiety, is the fact that addiction to digital activities, like social media and video games, is leaving people feeling like nothing else in their lives is good anymore, or satisfying. In the same way, depression can mellow out our feelings about the world, like everything losing its colour. Research has found that people who consume massive amounts of online media are experiencing similar symptoms; nothing else seems good or satisfying.
There is a scientific explanation for this, and it’s all to do with dopamine and the hedonic treadmill. When dopamine is released, we feel pleasure. It’s one of the main ways we enjoy things and experience pleasure - by doing things that release dopamine. Some examples of things that release dopamine might be: ticking a to-do off your list, buying something new, eating a sugary food, playing video games, taking recreational drugs, or getting notifications on social media.
The thing about dopamine is that it’s highly addictive. In fact, there’s an evolutionary trait within us that makes us crave dopamine, and the pleasure it brings. This creates a small problem when some of our main sources of dopamine are potentially damaging activities like recreational drugs, video games or social media. But the problem doesn’t just stop there; the thing about dopamine and the way our body reacts to it is that we have this other evolutionary trait, which tries to help us balance dopamine. The hedonic treadmill.
It’s a simple concept, imagine that within us, wherever we measure how much pleasure or pain we are feeling, there is a little two-sided scale. On one side is pain, on the other side is pleasure. Our body likes us to feel balanced. Although it likes pleasure, it never wants to be overrun by it; it requires balance. Similarly with pain, that’s no fun; the body wants balance. Anna Lembke talks about this in her book, Dopamine Nation, that every time we experience pleasure or pain, the body tries to self-regulate - balancing this scale. This, in theory, means when we are experiencing pleasure, it’s fading, it doesn’t last, because the body regulates itself back to an equilibrium. The same with pain, and we are particularly good at seeking out dopamine-inducing activities when we are in pain, to help balance this scale again.
But where does a treadmill come into this? Well, this is the final point about dopamine and its sources. We acclimate to these sources of dopamine, and the more we use them, the less dopamine they produce. Meaning, in the words of Anna Lembke:
We need more of our drug of choice to get the same effect. - p53
We need more recreational drugs, we need to play more video games, we need more sugary food, and we need to spend more time on social media. Like running harder and harder on a treadmill, but ultimately staying in the same place, constantly having to work harder to get the same bursts of pleasure, all for it to quickly be balanced out and our cravings (or addictions) to kick in again.
This shows us two things. Firstly, it’s one of the main reasons we become addicted to social media and draws us continually into this world of comparison and dissatisfaction. But second, it explains another reason why we may never be satisfied. Maybe we aren’t built to be satisfied? That equilibrium, that balancing of pleasure and pain. Maybe the feeling of satisfaction and contentment leans towards pleasure, and our bodies just balance it out, flushing it away, leaving us in a perpetual loop of craving something more.
Chasing the carrot on the stick
Another interesting argument that Harari mentions in Homo Deus is that, in a similar way to the hedonic treadmill, what if, from an evolutionary perspective, we have been built to survive, but not necessarily thrive? For hundreds of thousands of years, humans have had two goals: to survive as long as possible and to reproduce, keeping humanity going. These have been innate evolutionary goals, wired into all parts of our bodies, particularly our biochemical system, which rewards us (like with dopamine) for actions which contribute towards these two goals. Key actions like eating and sex are therefore rewarded by the body. It’s why orgasms feel so great; it’s evolution’s way of rewarding us for trying to reproduce and motivating us to do it again. It’s why eating is so satisfying, why, when we are really thirsty, water tastes like the greatest thing ever made. These key actions are required for survival and reproduction.
However, evolution needed a way for us to keep doing these things. To keep eating, drinking, and having sex. It made these feelings of pleasure and satisfaction fleeting. If we were to have sex once, and it was the best experience ever and left us eternally satisfied, then we’d never try to do it again. This would be a problem for reproduction; most people don’t create a baby after one single attempt. The same applies to ways of surviving. If drinking a glass of water left us satisfied, we’d stop feeling the need to do it again, meaning we’d die of thirst. Sub-optimal for survival of the human race. Therefore, to counter this, and to keep us surviving and reproducing, we have experiences that are short, that need to be done over and over again, with an ever-fading sense of satisfaction. Leaving us like donkeys, chasing the carrot dangling on the end of the stick.
These are just some of our physical needs. Humans have developed the need to find satisfaction through meaning and purpose, through the actions we take and even the things we achieve. The problem is, much like survival and reproduction, these things are also endless in nature, never really satisfying us. Even before the world of social media and mass comparison, humans have strived for achievements, created goals, and run on the treadmill of life. Whether it’s creating a career for ourselves, building family and community, mastering skills or any other of these goals we set out for ourselves, it feels like an innate part of human nature.
These are the things, once our basic needs like survival have been met, that get us out of bed in the morning and bring pleasure, a sense of achievement and with it, moments of satisfaction. Simon Sinek talks about this all the time when it comes to places of work and purpose. In Start with Why, he says:
Some people, while in pursuit of success, simply mistake WHAT they achieve as the final destination. This is the reason they never feel satisfied no matter how big their yacht is, no matter how much they achieve. The false assumption we often make is that if we simply achieve more, the feeling of success will follow. But it rarely does. - p182
It’s one of those experiences that doesn’t need much explaining. I think we can all relate, finding ourselves in different areas in life, getting stuck in the rat race, looking for some magical destination we reach that once we achieve that goal, or have that thing, we will suddenly feel at peace. Like we’ve made it, and we’re done. Yet, it never happens.
Without this drive to achieve, though, I imagine we humans wouldn’t get much done, and actually, this ultimately would hinder our chances of things like survival and reproduction, evolution’s golden objectives. Therefore, the drive to achieve is most likely another evolutionary trait that goes into overdrive, especially in a modern world full of so many possibilities. This carrot on a stick, need to survive, reproduce and even achieve are evolutionary traits which at times seem out of place in our modern world. Yet, we are stuck with them, and as scientists estimate that it takes 25,000 years for genetic adaptations and evolutionary changes to appear.
Overall, it feels like we are always going to have a thirst we cannot truly quench. In this really brief and basic overview, it feels as if humans were ever truly satisfied, it would interfere with what evolution has formed us into, so it’s unlikely to ever be a lasting feeling. But are there solutions? Possibly, many people across the world would point to their faiths, gods and religions. Even self-proclaimed atheists, like Jonathan Hadit, admit to there being a “God-shaped hole in every human heart”, a space that feels empty, like something’s missing, that, untreated, will be filled with the garbage society has to offer us. In Anxious Generation, Haidt talks about these challenges, and he challenges the reader to be aware of this and to be deliberate in choosing what we expose ourselves to, therefore filling this hole. God, many people, of many different faiths, would say, is potentially the way to fill this hole and also the road to quenching that thirst, and a last feeling of satisfaction. Others might argue for different things, like focusing on the journey of life over the destination, practising mindfulness, or seeking other spiritual practices and experiences.
Either way, whatever the answer to finding satisfaction is, it seems like an innate part of the human experience. It’s a feeling which is fleeting, momentary, but leads us on, day to day, to keep living and experiencing all that life has to offer.
What do you think?
References
Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly. 2002. Flow: The Classic Work on how to Achieve Happiness. N.p.: Rider.
Haidt, Jonathan. 2025. The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness. N.p.: Penguin Publishing Group.
Harari, Yuval N. 2017. Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow. Translated by Yuval N. Harari. N.p.: Vintage.
Junger, Sebastian. 2017. Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging. N.p.: 4th Estate.
Lembke, Anna. 2023. Dopamine Nation: Finding Balance in the Age of Indulgence. N.p.: Headline.
Sinek, Simon. 2011. Start with why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action. N.p.: Portfolio / Penguin.