Keywords: social media, brain, dopaminergic, behaviour, relationships
I am part of a generation which have seen the birth and the rise of social media. When I was a teenager I did not recall much of how the world perceived this phenomenon, as I was just enjoying great exchanges with my friends on MSN Messenger. Now I still use certain social media but with more caution now that years later we are more warned about their effects. But what are those effects precisely and what could be their consequences? The mini-series “Dopamine” on Arte’s Youtube channel provide some answers and I’ve decided to talk about 3 social media particularly appreciated in the world wide population.
These last 10 years, our social relations have known important changes with the emergence and growth of social media. Whether it is to find old friends and new friends on Facebook, to seek our prince Charming for the night or for life on Tinder or to show to the world how cool is our life on Instagram, our way to « use » human relationships has changed.
With Facebook in addition to communicating we keep ourselves informed about what we like in such a way that we stay in a bubble in which we spend more and more time. Facebook is based on the exploitation of what is so natural and instinctive in human being: sociability and friendships. Thanks to all the features that Facebook offers such as the « share » and the « like » buttons and now the possibility to react to everything with emojis, people can be in constant social interactions even when they’re alone.
If Facebook exploits our need with sociability, Tinder goes further by proposing to eventually date people based only on physical features, knowing that our brain is constantly looking for what is attractive around our environment. And this comes to stimulate our need to be attractive to others and this need will be in constant growth.
Regarding Instagram, which arouses our need to share and to show our daily life by posting pics and videos of our last breakfast or our amazing journey to Japan, even if it is fake or nothing more than a facade. This social media gives us multiple potential. We can follow our favorite celebrities or potentially become famous ourselves thanks to the content that we share and the influence it can have on our friends or unknown people that can follow us. It exploits the tendency that human beings have a hard time to hold back from taking pictures of everything and anything since we feel the irrepressible need to capture and share as many moments as possible and always interact event with outsiders.
So many social media and even more that bias our behaviors and our brain functioning. Indeed, it has been shown that the content of Facebook posts affected our emotions. Thus, the more we deal with negative content, the more we share negative content and vice versa. Moreover, simply publishing content gives our brain the impression of real social interaction.
But whether Facebook, Tinder or Instagram, all of these apps will awaken and strengthen our gregarious instincts and our need of social validation. Thus, we are on a constant quest for approval in the eyes of others and push ourselves to compare to others which can lead to jealousy behaviors. Those social media will influence our self-esteem and the way we interact, with more shallow exchanges.
All of these social media are made to release the hormone of pleasure in our brain : the dopamine. Any interaction, any shared post, any reactions from our friends or followers, and any like under our posts contribute to strongly activate our dopaminergic system. Counter to our appetite, there isn’t satiety mechanism in our dopaminergic system which makes us hook and makes us anxious when we don’t have our « dose » of social media. This neuroscientifical observation lead to the fact that social media can create an addiction behavior.
In our occidental world, 90% of the 18- to 29 years old have social media and spend at least 2 hours a day on them. In view of the above, the way we use social media is going to be a big deal for years to come. People of all ages need to be aware of the influence and effects of social apps on our brain and our behaviour and to focus how to use it wisely.
Sources :
[ARTE]. (2019, October 14). Pourquoi Instagram nous rend-il addict ? Dopamine [Youtube]. Seen on https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3EB1Kxrsx6A&t=1s
[ARTE]. (2019, September 23). Comment Tinder nous rend addict ? Dopamine [Youtube]. Seen on https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0PlvSpqKmHY
[ARTE]. (2019, September 30). Comment Facebook vous rend addict ? Dopamine [Youtube]. Seen on https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IahJWpRGbWE&t=389s
[TEDx Talks]. (2017, Jun 22). Is Social Media Hurting Your Mental Health? Bailey Parnell [Youtube]. Seen on https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Czg_9C7gw0o