Everyone loves to look on social media. For my teenage son, its endless hours of YouTube and epic fail videos. Sites such as Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Twitter, TikTok, YouTube and so many others. But what happens to your brain as you get sucked into hours of that instant gratification and seemingly bottomless barrage of videos and pictures, posts and comments? According to Pew Research, more than 69% of adults and 81% of teens use social media daily, with more than 90% of teens using it for more than 4 hours a day. (I would venture to guess this is more in the 6-8 hour range with teenagers!) The constant ability to access social media through smartphones means our brains are exposed to high volumes of stimulation and our neurons are firing all day long, which creates changes in the neurological architecture of our brain. What do these types of changes look like in your brain?
Attention Span - when constantly scrolling through the endless new videos, photos, posts, comments, likes and tags, our brain in is in a constant state of multi-tasking, stopping our brains from focusing and shortening our attention span. Like any muscle, if the brain is not worked, it begins to lose it's ability to. Those who are heavy on social media become less able to ignore distraction in
general, which leads to poorer cognitive performance and actually shrinks parts of the brain associated with maintaining concentration. Let me say that again - in bold for those with attention span issues, in case you are just skimming through
"Actually SHRINKS parts of the brain"
Memory - Remember when we were kids and just took pictures, sent them in to be developed and then waited for what seemed like an eternity to get them back? (well, at least when I was a kid that was how it was done... did I just age myself?!) With the instant documentation of events, new research shows that using social apps to document every little thing, may actually diminish your memory of the moments you sought to preserve. This affects the transactive memory - the way our brain divides information and decides where to store it - since social media, we know where to find the information but our brains do not actually store as many details about the experience. So we will know it happened, but not much else about it. "Pics or it didn't happen!" At this point, pics and I know it happened but still remember virtually nothing about it.
Social and Emotional Response - We all have fallen to the addictive side of social media. Hoping our posts get likes and comments. But why do we feel we need this validation? Studies have shown that with each like or comment we are hit with that little rush of dopamine to the brain. Dopamine is the "feel good" hormone, creating a sense of pleasure and reward pathways and in turn causes us to desire more "likes" or followers or retweets, etc. on social media. And round and round we go.
So how do we keep these from happening in our brains and neuropathways?
Limit the time you allow yourself on social media, or stimulating devices such as the VR headsets. If you're feeling overwhelmed, overstimulated or just an overall
anxiety - this is a good indicator you need a break. Relax your mind - take a 15 minute walk, meditation is always good and for those of you coordinated enough - nothing better than a little tree pose to get your brain focusing on staying upright and relaxing away from the stimulation.
Wait... does this blog count as social media??
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