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Online newspaper: When was the last time you watched a full movie without checking your phone? Social media is designed to manipulate your reward system, so you “just have to verify something” long before the title appears.
You lie on the couch with the television on. The sound is low, so you can take a little nap if you want. She snuggles under a blanket, lays her head back on a soft pillow, and feels like the couch is good medicine after a long and hectic day.
But then you feel a little sting. You become restless, almost distracted from relaxation. The phone is on the table in front of you. Completely black. The screen won’t turn on, so there’s no sign of anyone trying to communicate with you.
But should you check it anyway?
No. You should relax. So you watch a little television. Trying to close my eyes.
Maybe just check Instagram a little faster? Someone has probably posted something funny.
No. You should relax.
The discomfort is growing. What is everyone else doing, really?
Then it sinks. Yes! You pick up the phone. Shot from a colleague.
You smile. He opens it. The discomfort is gone.
Now you can relax. OR?
This is what your brain is after
Do you know what is the most important reward for the brain?
You would think it is to solve a challenging piece of math. Or learn something new. Maybe get food when you’re hungry?
It is wrong. Our brain seeks, above all, to belong to a herd. The most important thing is to get the acceptance of a group of people who support you.
The worst thing the brain fears the most is being thrown out of the herd.
When you receive confirmation that you belong, and especially if you are given high status within the group, the brain applauds. Then the reward system expels dopamine, a molecule that makes us feel good.
The delicious sensation lasts for a while, but disappears when the level of dopamine in the brain drops again. Then what do you do?
Looking for more, of course.
Ancient brain in the new world
– Dopamine is an ancient system that has been established for its species to survive. In short, dopamine provides motivation and rewards for providing you with food and reproducing it. If you have a weak reward and dopamine system, you won’t have much interest in getting food or multiplying. And what happens then? Yes, you die early without issue.
This is explained by Professor Aina Westrheim Ravna from the University of Tromsø. She specializes in the brain’s reward system.
In the days when we lived in caves, looked for our own food and slept with one eye open for fear of dangerous animals, it was essential to have the support of the herd to survive. If he was alone, he had little chance of survival. Status in the herd also facilitated reproduction.
And our brain is old, as Ravna says. So even though we now buy food at the store, sleep through the night, and can find our girlfriend on Tinder, the brain reacts to the same things.
He pursues the same affiliation. But your flock is no longer with you in the cave. They lie down at home and look at their phone, so do they.
So you have to log in to stay up to date, right?
– First, social networks activate the reward center because it is precisely social. Even if they are not physically together, they have the feeling of belonging to the pack and then the brain secretes dopamine, says Ravna.
Additionally, research shows that social media can also increase the level of oxytocin, also known as the “hugging hormone,” a molecule that is activated by hugging, closeness, and attachment.
– This happens for the same reason, that is, many experience a herd formation through social networks. Oxytocin and dopamine together give a very good feeling in the body.
Motivation and reward
But it doesn’t stop there. Social media apps, such as Facebook, Tiktok, Instagram, and Twitter, are designed to manipulate your reward system so that you spend a lot of time there, constantly looking for rewards.
Social networks allow a lot of confirmation, in the form of likes, followers and messages. The brain wants it more than anything else. At the same time, it leaves at least the same room for the brain’s greatest fear, namely rejection and exclusion.
Therefore, we seek confirmation with dopamine as motivation and reward. Because when it comes to the dopamine system, we distinguish between two phases: wanting and liking.
– When you want something, you get a dopamine rush. In that context, dopamine helps motivate you, and then you get a new boost when you receive the award, explains the professor.
The most obvious example is, of course, “man chases woman.” While he texts, asks on dates, and is interested in absolutely everything she says, he has so much dopamine in his body that his motivation is sky high. In fact, so loud that he himself thinks he’s really interested in what Beate at work recounted over lunch.
When he finally takes her (to bed), the brain expels even more dopamine, and the feeling of happiness is complete.
Transferred to the use of social networks, the race is the same. When you lie down on the couch and feel the restlessness, your body is in hunting mode. You want to go to Instagram to check the feed, to see if anything new has happened. Your body pushes on dopamine to keep you motivated, and finally, you have to check it out.
Oi! You have a new follower! It’s cute from the party this weekend! “What does the brain say? Good, here you have a little more dopamine!
Five minutes later he likes your photo. Even more dopamine!
But what if nothing funny happened? Yes, so you live off the motivation fever. Drag your finger down the screen to update the feed, a bit like you do on slot machines. You’re motivated to drag your finger down again. Refreshing. And again.
There! Image of the ex and the new girlfriend.
Dopamine surge and fifty other emotions. You are welcome!
Like the slot machines in Vegas
In psychology, this action, in which you drag your finger down to update over and over again, is called “intermittent positive reinforcement.” It is a behavior that triggers immediate stimuli, it means that the behavior is repeated more frequently.
And that’s exactly what the people behind these apps want: for you to drag your finger across the screen over and over again, until you find something you like. And since you have left a lot of information about yourself on these platforms, it is far from a random thing to be thrown in your direction.
They know what clothes you like, what celebrities you are interested in, who your best friends are, and what company you would like to work for. So sometimes after you drag your finger across the screen multiple times, they give you content that they know you want.
And what does your brain do then? That’s right, it releases dopamine.
– You don’t know when you get it, or if you get it, so it works the same as Vegas slot machines. It is not enough that you use the product consciously, I want to go deep into the brain stem and implant an unconscious habit, so that you are programmed on a deeper level.
That’s what Tristan Harris, a former Google designer, says. Harris is one of several who has previously worked for one of the largest social media companies, but is now featured in the Netflix documentary “The Social Dilemma” with his concerns.
One of the things that worries them the most is that users are unaware that these apps are programmed to manipulate the brain’s reward system, so you unconsciously spend hours on the apps.
– Social networks are not a tool waiting to be used. He has his own goals and his own means of pursuing them using psychology against him, Harris says.
Helps reduce usage
When the brain’s reward center is activated in this way, we search over and over again.
But we are demanding more and more to get the delicious dopamine high. Whereas at first you could be ecstatic with 15 likes, now you demand 150. While at first it was exciting to have a new follower from time to time, now you will have new ones every day.
– We have different sensitivities to dopamine in the brain. Some require more stimuli than others to get the dopamine rush, and if we do the same activity over and over again, the brain requires a higher dose to make us feel as good, says Ravna.
Dopamine is secreted when we drink alcohol or use drugs. We know that alcoholics and drug addicts often have to increase the dose to achieve the same stimuli, and it is a bit like that with everything that boosts dopamine: little by little we demand more and more to be satisfied.
If you’ve ended up in this situation, where you need more and more Instagram confirmation to be happy, Ravna has some advice for you:
Cut back, but don’t eliminate it entirely, and replace the source of dopamine with something other than social media.
– For example, I usually listen to an exciting podcast, preferably a crime series in English. So I have to go on, otherwise I don’t understand what is happening, says Ravna.
Due to the language and theme, Ravna is forced to put the phone away. At the same time, you get the dopamine rush from the thrilling action.
– If you find something that you think is as exciting as social media, you can activate the reward system. British crime works for me, but dopamine can be triggered by a number of things, as long as it is a pleasant activity for you.
