Anna Lembke

Clinicians & Public Health · Stanford University School of Medicine

Stanford addiction psychiatry chief who called the smartphone "a modern-day hypodermic needle."

Anna Lembke chairs addiction psychiatry at Stanford University and is best known for her book "Dopamine Nation" (2021), which examines how technology and other modern conveniences can be engineered to exploit the brain's reward system. She has described the smartphone as "the modern-day hypodermic needle, delivering digital dopamine 24 hours a day" — a framing she brought to a wider audience through her appearance in the documentary "The Social Dilemma." As a practicing addiction psychiatrist, she brings a clinical, addiction-medicine framing to public conversations about compulsive technology use.