With social media sites being used by one third of the entire world, they’ve clearly had a major on society. But what about our bodies? Here are 5 crazy ways that social media and the internet are your brain right now!
Can’t log off? Surprisingly, 5 to 10% of internet users are actually
to control how much time they spend online.
Though it’s a psychological addiction as opposed to a substance addiction, brain scans of these people
actually show a similar
impairment of regions that those with drug dependence have. Specifically, there is a clear degradation of white matter in the regions that control
processing, attention and
. Because social media
provides immediate
rewards with very little
required, your brain begins to
rewire itself, making you
these stimulations. And you begin to
crave more of this
excitement after each interaction. Sounds a little like a drug, right?
We also see a
shift when looking at
. You might think that those who use social media or
switch between work and websites are better at multitasking, but
have found that when comparing heavy media users to others, they
perform much
worse during
. Increased multi-tasking online reduces your brain's ability to filter out interferences, and can even make it harder for your brain to
commit information to memory.
Like when your phone
buzzes in the middle of productive work. Or wait... did it even buzz? Phantom Vibration Syndrome is a relatively new
where you think you felt your phone
go off, but it didn’t. In one study, 89% of test subjects said they experience this
at least once every two weeks. It would seem that our brains now
perceive an
itch as an
vibration from our phone. As crazy as it seems, technology has begun to
our nervous systems - and our brains are being
triggered in a way they never have been before in history.
Social Media also
a
release of dopamine - the feel good
chemical. Using MRI scans, scientist found that the
centres in people’s brains are much more active when they are talking about their
own views, as opposed to listening to others. Not so surprising - we all love talking about ourselves right?
But it turns out that
while 30 to 40% of face-to-face conversations
involve communicating our own experiences, around 80% of social media communication is
self involved. The same part of your brain related to orgasms, motivation and love are stimulated by your social media use - and even more so when you know you have an
audience.
Our body is
rewarding us for talking about ourselves online! But it’s not all so
. In fact, studies on
have found that partners tend to like
each other more if they meet for the first time online
rather than with a
interaction.
Whether it’s because people are more anonymous or perhaps more clear about their
goals, there is a statistical increase in successful
partnerships that started online. So while the internet has changed our verbal communication with increased physical separation, perhaps the ones that matter most end up even closer.
