The SHOCKING impact of social media | Social Media Addiction |

You're on your phone. You are on social media, just like everyone else. You know, it's probably, how you found this blog post in the first place. Still, in this video, I will show you how dangerous social media platforms can be. Do you know that feeling when you're just a little bit bored and immediately feel like opening Facebook, Snapchat, TikTok or Twitter or falling down the Instagram rabbit hole?

Well, according to research it might be down to neuroplasticity. So, what is neuroplasticity? How is social media affecting our lives in our brains? Researchers and doctors have warned us that social media can be a lot of fun and have some benefits sidewise it can also be seriously harmful to both our physical and mental health.

So, in this blog post, we'll go over exactly how social media affects your brain from a biological and scientific standpoint. We will scan the tactics that Big Tech used to get hooked on their platform. We will also examine how you can protect yourself from the worst side of social media while still having lots of fun with it. And finally how you can use social media for your benefit.

How we all got on social media:

On the 4th of February, 2004 mark Zuckerberg launched Facebook located at facebook.com. It was a social media restricted to the students of Harvard College. Within just one month, more than half of all undergraduates had registered for an account. Skip ahead, six years to July 2010, the company had accumulated a user base of 500 million people.

Sooner than later Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat and TikTok popped out of nowhere. In total, these apps combined have a user base of over 3.9 billion people. but how do they get to this number? And what is so special about social media?

What scientists call the implicated brain reward circuit, which sounds complicated but it isn't you see. In our brains, there is a region called the ventral segmental area (VTA). It is responsible for rewarding us every time we do anything pleasurable or productive. The VTA does that by releasing the feel-good hormone dopamine. So, when we receive positive feedback in the forms of likes, retweets and positive comments, our brain fires dopamine receptors which are partially facilitated by this VTA and it makes us feel great.

But what happens to our human dopamine system once we are immersed in the positive feedback loop of constant novelty likes, upwards and comments online? Well, our brains get drowned in dopamine and it feels exciting but it also depletes our dopamine reserves and raises our dopamine tolerance. Everything else becomes less pleasurable and we are less motivated to do it.

Once you've had a three-hour TikTok binge, it's going to be much less enjoyable for you to do something productive like reading a book or practicing new skills.

 

On top of that, the cycle of trigger and reward is the basic principle that builds habit and addiction. 

 

Researchers have shown time and time again that social media apps can trigger and amplify our feelings of envy and loneliness. Even worse, they can distort your own self-image and make you feel inferior to others.

Remember that dreading feeling when you just posted something and you get no response at all. No likes, no shares, no comments and no retweets. Well, it turns out that's no accident. It's part of the design of any social media platform.

Some long lasting issues found with the social media addiction are:

·         Personal Issues:

Low self-esteem is more common today than ever before among adults teens and children alike everyone is feeling the pressure and a desire to fit in with their peers or make a good first impression at work or school.

·         Family Issues:

A 2012 study from the center of eating disorders found that over 30 Facebook users feel sad when they compare themselves to photos of their friends on the platform. the beautiful image of a married couple on vacation can easily trigger feelings of envy and stop you from appreciating that you are right now with your spouse and forgetting the small pleasures in your own life.

·         Memory Issues:

Research also shows that heavy social media use is linked with memory issues, especially in your transactive memory. This kind of memory involves deciding what information is important enough to store in your brain and what information can be outsourced. Social media's central future the sharing and storing of your experiences may be altering which memories you keep and which ones you don't.

·         Social Issues:

In one study the participants were asked to record an event like new year's eve celebrations using their mobile phones and other groups were asked to simply experience the event without recording it. At the end of the study, those who were recording and sharing the event performed far worse and showed more of memory loss than those who experienced the event without recording it.

·         Health Issues:

Finally, one crucial element of life that social media can disrupt is the quality of our sleep. A recent study involving almost 12,000 adults found that overall heavier social media use was associated with poorer sleep patterns.

There are two distinctive terms to describe human relationships; there are weak social sides and there are strong children's eyes. Since while social media is great for weak ties, studies have shown this actually is hurting our abilities to build and maintain strong ones.

Habit-forming apps:

All social media apps are designed to be habit-forming. The goal is to make you stay as long as possible and to always come back for more. So, they can show you more ads and more ads. The author of "hooked: how to build habit-forming products" divides the process Big Tech use into four steps.

1: It needs to get you to open it and this is what those annoying notifications and red app dots next to the app icons are for. A simple trigger to make you open the app and look at your notifications. Over time those external triggers can become internal triggers. So, if every time you feel a little bit bored and you open Facebook or Instagram or TikTok you literally program yourself to do every single time. You have this feeling meaning over time you've programmed your mind to resort to social media.

2: You start to feel bored and creeping in one way I combat. This is to completely turn off notifications. After the trigger comes the action or should we say the reaction. And once the trigger action sequence is repeated a few hundred times, it becomes automatic, it becomes a no-brainer. A great way to counter this step is to place a few barriers between you and the action. This can be done by always logging out of your accounts so that you are forced to log in, the time that you want to use social media or forcing yourself to use the web browser instead of the app. These extra steps increase friction and weaken the habit circuit in your brain, making the action of putting and over time giving you the discipline to fight social media addiction.

3: Now, this is where true addiction is manufactured. So, once you've taken the action, you get a reward. It feels good and the dopamine surge strengthens the trigger action reward connection in your brain. But what do you think the social media reward is? Is it a cute photo? A funny meme? Well, actually it's the novelty, or in other words, the thrill of freshness is the excitement of finding out what will be on your feet. Sometimes it's a great pose that you like and sometimes it's something boring. But exactly, this uncertainty is what creates the thrill, that gets people addicted to social media. The social media giants know this and are using the same tactics. Once a real addiction is formed the person will start craving the reward every time he's triggered.

4: In the long term, we'd have invested so much into our social media accounts that the Big Tech giants make us believe that their products are a big part of our own identity. It is why so many people struggle with addictions. Because over the long term it becomes part of your identity.

So, by using these four steps they influence our thoughts, habits and behaviors. But while it can be harmful when we don't understand what is happening?

Now that you know exactly how social media works you can turn the tables and instead use its power to your advantage. Here are few things that will surely work for you to make sure that social media apps work for you rather than against you.

·         Unfollow everything and everyone that you don't need. This might take a few days but every time you see a pose from these millionaire influencers who have the most perfect six-pack abs, who seem to be travelling around the world every week, change outfits three-four times a day and are living the perfect lifestyle. It can distort your perception of reality. Every page that you follow is a vote for who you want to become.

·         Connect with high-value people who can help you achieve your goals. Whatever is you want more in life it can be more money, friends, mindfulness or health. I can guarantee you, you will find a community for it online. I genuinely believe that every single one of us has some unique talents and by sharing your talents on social media you can build a great personal brand and connect with potential clients or potential future employers.

Enjoy the amazing opportunity to be on the internet. Just make sure you use it well and don't let it use you.

Please like and share this blog if you found this beneficial and subscribe to my blog. Stay sharp and I'll catch you in the next one.