Two biological processes have been found to explain the ‘irrational’ behaviour of human beings to social media, and you need to pay attention. The first is oxytocin and the second, dopamine.
It used to be thought that dopamine was a just a pleasure hormone that made people feel happy, therefore, a psychological process. However, a startling new discovery is that dopamine is an addiction chemical that the brain produces. In other words, the effect of oxytocin and dopamine is not only mental, it is a biological thing. But wait a minute, there’s more surprise.
Researchers conducted a ground breaking enquiry into why people felt so happy with social media and found that Dopamine was simply not a pleasure substance but one that ’causes us to seek, desire, and search.’ In other words, it does not just make people happy, it makes them want more. This is how we get hooked to social media because the more dopamine is elicited, the more we want the feeling and the more we desire the more we seek for more.
It was also found that ‘Dopamine is stimulated by unpredictability, by small bits of information, and by reward cue’. Do you know about the Pavlovian stimulus-response mechanism?
The researchers also found that when you tweet, the drag of dopamine you get is stronger than the pull of both drinking and cigarettes smoking. Put differently, when faced between a drag of cigarette and completingvavtweet session, you would suspend your cigarette event to conclude your tweeting or may even forget smoking temporarily because you are in an extended session of tweeting.
On the other hand, Oxytocin also referred to as “the cuddle chemical” displayed a similar surprising result as Dopamine. In this case, not only is the effect of tweeting similar to kissing and hugging, the Oxytocin levels created by tweeting is higher in intensity than most people realise. For instance, “In 10 minutes of social media time, oxytocin levels can rise as much as 13%—a hormonal spike equivalent to some people on their wedding day.” For more on this unique hormone see a previous article on Hug, Hug and Be Hugged.
Conclusion
So let's say that social media may be harmful if you do it to the detriment of your immediate environment such as friends and family, but it also has positive effects (lowers stress, promotes a feeling of love, trust, and empathy) that will make them stay around for a long time to come.
Asoya Relationship Musings - ARM 