Why scrolling on social media is addictive

[Music] foreign are you scrolling it's probably how you found this video how long you watched the video how many likes comments shares influences what you see travel pillows we've been wearing them the wrong way shut up although what you do on social media may seem insignificant to your overall well-being it does matter well social media has essentially taken human connection and turned it into a drug by distilling it down to the essential properties that make something addictive for others social media has been a place where they found lost family members organ donors so if you

have a boat meaningful life events that have happened around the world but cell phones and social media are so deeply connected to every aspect of Our Lives hard work family school but most experts say we can't easily quit and to understand why social media is so addictive we have to look into how our brain works foreign controls thought memory emotion along with all the five senses and every process that regulates our body all those tasks are performed by Pathways where the brain sends messages to the nervous system and the nervous system sends messages back we'll

focus on the brain's reward system here is where dopamine is mostly produced a type of neurotransmitter also called a feel-good hormone that is sent to four Pathways one of those is a mesolimbic dopamine pathway which is connected to the amygdala and the hippocampus the first processes emotion while the latter is essential for learning and memory too much or too little dopamine affects how we learn get motivated or mood attention or heart rate and many other behaviors and physical functions and this is where studies show the addictiveness of social media when we engage with social media

it releases a lot of dopamine in the brain's reward Pathway lights up the same part of the brain is drugs and alcohol it's incredibly accessible we have 24 7 access to this particular drug it's Bountiful in the sense that it's practically speaking infinite Tick Tock never runs out and number four it's incredibly novel the AI algorithms learn what we've liked before and actually push to us the suggestion that we want to keep going or check out the next new new thing in late May the Surgeon General put out an advisory about the effects of social

media on youth Mental Health he highlighted adolescence and childhood as a critical stage in brain development and that young people are more at risk when they're spending too much time on social media the bottom line is we don't have enough evidence to say that this is in fact sufficiently safe for our kids what we have instead is growing evidence that tells us that social media use is often associated with harms to our kids and my growing concern is that social media has become an important contributor to that youth Mental Health crisis but how do you

explain this to teenagers 18 year old Marianna Myers try to do just that she animated a visual essay named nomophobia or nomobophobia for her English class in Arizona on what it looks when you're addicted to social media the idea of the video was kind of a cautionary tale as to saying how technology smartphones in particular and social media can be great it can be a great tool um a way to connect but it can also lead to overuse and overuse can lead to a lot of negative consequences Meyer's video is now part of a lawsuit

in her home school district which is suing meta Snapchat Tick Tock and YouTube for creating what they say is a Health crisis among America's youth although similar lawsuits have been filed across the country like in California and Washington access to social media is everywhere Dr limke says moderation is key she then recommends a dopamine fast and to become aware of the three C's control compulsion and consequences if we're using an out of control way if we're using an automatic compulsive Way That We Can't Stop even when we want to and if we're having consequences as

a result of our use we really have to take a hard look at that behavior trying to make it change similar to what miles Crawford and Charlene De Guzman show in their short documentary I forgot my phone fish