Studies have shown that the frequent social media users become addicted to social media sites in such a way that people get addicted to drugs or alcohol, which results in our professional, academic, and social impairment  So now we need to ask ourselves the following questions: are we the real culprit of social media addiction  or is someone else forcing us to engage with social media?  The answer is yes, and the real culprits are the “neurotransmitters” in our brain.

The presence of neurotransmitters in our brain

• Every time someone liked or commented our social media updates or sees new connection requests, it will result in the release of the brain pleasure hormone, dopamine, which is a neurotransmitter responsible for controlling our moods and regulating our emotional responses and sense of rewards. The release of dopamine is higher when we receive positive responses and reinforcement, and it gets reduced when we get negative responses. This hormone is responsible for our urge to check social media sites and seek rewards, and it becomes harder to stop seeking more rewards once you get rewarded. [1] [2]
• The constant stress from cyberbullying, lack of real friends, feeling of missing out, online harassments and other negative responses that you face in social media lowers the supply of the happiness hormone, serotonin. The insufficiency of the adequate amount of serotonin will lead to depression. The more pleasure we expect and receive from social media the more unhappy we become due to the higher and lower production of dopamine and serotonin-hormones respectively. [3] [4]
• Studies showed that using social media for a few minutes with positive and funny content can stimulate the love and pleasure hormone, oxytocin, which is responsible for regulating our social interaction and encourages human empathy, trust, and kindness. This hormone leads to heightened feelings such as hedonism, generosity, and love, which make us hard to stop seeking more in social media sites. [5] [6]
• The positive responses received from social media stimulates and release the brain hormones Adrenaline in our body, and the overabundance of this hormone build up every day in our body after each social media use auses loss of sleep, and create anxiety, anger, and nervousness. The secretion of high levels of adrenaline hormones will speed up the process of addiction. [7]

Sleep disorder due to blue light of our devices

• The blue light emitted by our devices (computers, televisions, smartphones, and tablets) inhibit the production of melatonin, which is a brain hormone responsible for sleep. The increased use of blue light screens regulates our natural sleep pattern, and we feel tired and inactive the next day. Excessive use of electronic devices exposes more blue light to our retina and damages the retinal pigments, and the photoreceptors, which are accountable to protect our retina. [8] [9] [10]
• Additionally, the extensive multitasking that has become a normality in our lives these days by parallelly using the social media along with other activities damages our cognitive functioning of the frontal cortex lobe in our brain, which is responsible for our memory, decision making, moderating our social behavior, planning and motivation. [11]

Read next: How does the use of electronic devices in the night ruin our sleep and health?

References

[1] Samuel P. L. Veissiere et al., Frontiers in Psychology, 9, 2018, 1-10.

[2] Christian Montag et al., Journal of Addiction Medicine, 6, 2012, 191-195.

[3] Elias Aboujaoude, World Psychiatry, 9, 2010, 85-90.

[4] https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/sep/09/pursuit-of-pleasure-modern-day-addiction/

[5] https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-functions-of-the-hormones-serotonin-dopamine-adrenaline-and-oxytocin/

[6] Mark D. Griffiths et al., The Handbook of the Psychology of Communication Technology, John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 2015.

[7] Roger Smith et al., The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism, 83, 1998, 2916-2920.

[8] Amelia C. Strick, Exploring the effects of social media use on the mental health of young adults, 2014.

[9] Paul Gringras et al., Frontiers in Public Health, 3, 2015, 1-6.

[10] Line Kessel et al., Sleep, 34, 2011,1215-1219.

[11] María Roca et al., Neuropsychologia, 49, 2011, 3525-3531.