The Irresistible Pull of Social Media

All of us who have tried and failed to reduce our social media usage know what an addiction feels like–that scratch that we feel when we see a notification pop up on our screens and which continues to grow until we give in and click on it; the deep discomfort we feel when we don’t have our phones with us; and even the near-hallucinatory effect of feeling our phones vibrate in our pockets when they are not even there!

There are several reasons why social media is so attractive from a neuroscience and psychology point of view. And of course, creators of social media apps know and exploit all these things, often designing aspects of their websites to be addictive.

First, the Neuroscience:

There's a genuine reason why seeing social media notifications informing us of the number of likes on a post of ours feels so good. Dopamine is a neurotransmitter or chemical messenger in our brain that plays a role in how we feel pleasure. Dopamine has also been found to play a role in encoding memories of what we find rewarding and motivating behavior. Every time we see a notification telling us of the number of likes our post has received, there is a surge of dopamine in our brains that tells us, “This was rewarding and felt good, so let me do it again when I get a chance!”

In studies on mice, the animals responded most positively to a reward-inducing stimulus when they were unable to predict when exactly they would be rewarded. In essence, then, the unexpected nature of the reward is rewarding in itself. This is one of the reasons why we find it almost irresistible to check our smartphones periodically–we don’t know exactly when we will get rewarded in the form of a notification. The anticipation is partly why it is so tempting.

Then, the Psychology:

We have evolved as a species to be social, and in fact, our ability to cooperate in groups might be a big reason for the success of our species. So in the terms of this evolutionary perspective, it is no surprise that social media can have such a pull. Unfortunately, though, it seems like social media leaves a lot lacking when it comes to genuine social connection because it has been found that reducing social media use reduced feelings of loneliness and depression in college students.

Another reason why social media is so attractive is because of a concept in psychology called the "sociometer." The sociometer is like an internal tracking system telling us, minute-by-minute, how other people perceive us. Given how much it seems to matter what other people think of us, social media can seem like a really effective way to present the best versions of ourselves.

Finally, the Design:

All the social media apps are, in essence, competing for our attention. So all of them employ techniques informed by psychology to make us stick around.

Some social media sites have algorithms that will withhold "likes" on our posts, only to deliver them in larger bursts a little later on. Our dopamine systems work because the initial disappointment causes a greater rush of dopamine when we do see all the likes appear.

Also, each time we refresh the page on our social media sites, a totally new feed appears. So now we don’t have to navigate away from whichever website we were using. There's enough content there to make us scroll endlessly.

Messaging apps will show us that a person is typing so that we don’t navigate away from the app after sending a message. As soon as we see the ‘so-and-so is typing’ notification, we just hang around on that screen, waiting for the other person to respond. These are all ways in which social media sites grab our attention and keep us engaged.

What Can We Do About It?

We can make small tweaks to our digital lives to make our social media experience more positive and take more control of the time we spend on our screens. Simply being more conscious of how much time we are on our screens can greatly help. It is also always a good idea to turn off notifications from all social media apps so that we control our decision of when to consume social media instead of the apps dictating things for us.

There are also quite a few programs, extensions, and apps that we can install on our computers to help productivity. I recently installed an extension that blocks selected websites after a set time limit each day. I also sometimes use a smartwatch where I can quickly see and close notifications that might pop up. This is useful because unlocking our phones to check notifications usually opens up a Pandora's box that becomes really hard to close, and we end up spending way more time on our phones than we might have intended.

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Also, it might be a good idea not to take our phones into our bedrooms at night, close to bedtime, given how the blue light and the constant activation due to social media can cause sleep disruptions.

As the new year approaches, “reduce time on social media” will appear on at least a few of our New Year Resolution lists. Perhaps understanding the way the apps are designed to suck our attention and time can help us gain some control and use the apps as the tools as they were originally intended.