eli5: Why is social media so addicting?
In: 5
People are social animals, who value social interaction with others. Social media also fits in with “humans are lazy”, allowing people to have social interactions without the work to go to a meeting site, or bring a potluck dish, or <whatever other social activity you have invitations to>.
Algorithms push content that they know you will enjoy so you’ll stay on their platform for longer. Check out the social dilemma on netflix.
Because they provide the social interactions you need while allowing you to avoid conflict easily.
They are carefully designed to be that way. In the age of free content, you no longer pay for access to services, instead corporations pay for access to your time, attention and personal information with the intention of making a sort of delayed profit from you eventually via advertisements, sponsored content etc.
Since corporations are the ones investing money into these companies, pleasing them and ensuring they benefit takes priority over the user when the social media platforms are updated. Over time they have been carefully tweaked in order to maximise attention and time even as it was shown to be detrimental to some users. Things like endless scrolling, like buttons and algorithms favouring divisive content were introduced in order to keep your attention for as long as possible so you can be shown advertisements, have your email address harvested, and your user habits collected so you can be funnelled into seeing adverts for things you are most likely to buy.
In terms of the actual effect on your brain, the little PING that you get seeing something amusing or divisive or a bit of social validation from a like or comment is a rush of endorphins. Your brain is hardwired very very strongly to seek these chemical hits as they indicate ‘good thing is happening we should repeat this’, and so you start out with a healthy relationship to social media, checking in on friends and communicating – using the platform for its original purpose – and gradually, without realising it, you begin to use the platforms more and more, becoming more exposed to these feel-good feedback loops until you’ve developed a habit that you can’t break. Phones are in our pockets every minute of our lives, we have a simple easy way to escape any unpleasant thought, any microsecond of boredom, just jump on and get a few little hits of interesting things and before you know it you’ve wasted your evening looking at garbage you weren’t interested in.
The same way a rat will wear out its little pink claws pushing a button for a drop of addictive substance over and over again until it has two bloody stumps, so we wear out our brains by giving them these little hits over and over again, completely dulling their sensitivity to real sensual pleasure and smoothing over our abilities to be mentally flexible and focused and resiliant.
To the best of my understanding…
Humans are basically the same animal as tens of thousands of years ago. Your brain is wired to “reward” you for things that would normally be critical for your survival, reproduction etc.
Social media is very new and the incentives for the platforms are to keep you hooked as much as possible because attention spent on the platform means more money. So basically everything is done in such a way that it will try to hack that primitive brain of yours. Notifications, likes, shares, infinite scroll, engagement in the comments and so on trigger those rewards from your brain.
As long as the platforms have new posts, news, videos to keep you engaged (and maybe enraged), you will keep refreshing because there’s always something new to capture your attention.
We live in an attention economy. Social media companies spend a lot of money researching how to make their product rewarding for our human brains without thinking of the consequences to our mental health. Notifications, likes, etc trigger a dopamine rush that is as addictive as a slot machine. They also use RF Skinner’s research to manipulate behavior. He is considered the Father of ABA Therapy, which is a controversial therapy for autistic people.
I read a book years ago called Hooked by Nir Eyal which was scary on how callous it was in laying out a blueprint for creating habit-forming digital products. BTW after that, he wrote a book on how not to be distracted by habit-forming products. smh
When we receive things like “likes” on social media, we feel acceptance by the tribe and our brains produce a dopamine rush not much unlike when we eat things like sugar. Over time, those who use social media often have their brains become conditioned to this stream of small dopamine hits, and when they go without it they tend to feel a deficit, thus the addiction.
Because it’s engineered to be designed in a way that will trigger as much dopamine stimulation as possible with minimum energy required to follow
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