Social Media s Influence On Social Interactions - amazonia.fiocruz.br

He was responding to a question about his involvement in exploiting consumer behavior. Taking a closer look at the underlying science may give you pause the next time you feel your pocket buzz. While there is nothing inherently addictive about smartphones themselves, the true drivers Sociak our attachments to these devices are the hyper-social environments they provide. Thanks to the likes of Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram, and others, smartphones allow us to carry immense social environments in our pockets through every waking moment of our lives.

Never Alone

Though humans have evolved to be social—a key feature to our success as a species—the social structures in which we thrive tend to contain about individuals. This number is orders of magnitude smaller than the 2 billion potential connections we carry around in our pockets today. There is no doubt that smartphones provide immense benefit to society, but their cost is becoming more and more apparent. Studies are beginning to show links between smartphone usage and increased levels of anxiety and depressionpoor sleep qualityand increased risk of car injury or death.

Many of us wish we spent less time on our phones but find it incredibly difficult to disconnect. Why are our smartphones so hard to ignore?

The influence of social media is unbeli…By Virgil van Dijk

Dopamine is a chemical produced by our brains that plays a starring role in motivating behavior. It gets released when we take a bite of delicious food, when we have sex, after we exercise, and, importantly, when we have successful social interactions. In an evolutionary context, it rewards us for beneficial behaviors and motivates us to repeat them. Each pathway has its own associated cognitive and motor movement processes. They are responsible for the release of dopamine in various parts of the brain, which shapes the activity of those areas.

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The fourth, the tuberoinfundibular pathway, regulates the release of a hormone called prolactin that is required for milk production. While the reward pathways Figure 1 are distinct in their anatomical organization, all three become active when anticipating or experiencing rewarding events.

In particular, they reinforce the association between a particular stimulus or sequence of behaviors and the feel-good reward that follows. Every time a response to a stimulus results in a reward, these associations become stronger through a process called long-term potentiation. Although not as intense Social Media s Influence On Social Interactions hit of cocaine, positive social stimuli will similarly result in a release of dopamine, reinforcing whatever behavior preceded it. Cognitive neuroscientists have shown that rewarding social stimuli—laughing faces, positive recognition by our peers, messages from loved ones—activate the same dopaminergic reward pathways.

Smartphones have provided us with a virtually unlimited supply of social stimuli, both positive and negative. Because most social media platforms are free, they rely on revenue from advertisers to make a profit. This system works for everyone involved at first glance, but it has created an arms race for your attention and time. Research in reward learning and addiction have recently focused on a feature of our dopamine neurons called reward prediction error RPE encoding. These prediction errors serve as dopamine-mediated feedback signals in our brains Figure 2. This neurological feature is something casino owners have used to their advantage for years. It would be no fun otherwise. But as negative outcomes accumulate, the loss of dopamine activity encourages us to disengage. Thus, a balance between positive and negative outcomes must be maintained in order to keep our brains engaged.]