How Does Social Media Have a Bad Effect On Our Brain?

Have you ever looked at the screen time on your phone? How much time do you spend per day just playing social media? In the era of 2022, we are certainly no stranger to social media. Currently almost everyone in the world uses social media ranging from adults, teenagers to children. The average internet user spends 2 hours 30 minutes daily on social media by 2022 (Source: EarthWeb). Using social media certainly provides many benefits for the users. 

Social media is widely used for work or just for entertainment, for example reading or watching news, posting pictures, videos and statuses, communicating with family, friends or even looking for friends on social media, viewing memes or funny videos that are widely spread on all social media platforms. So with so many interesting things from social media, does it only have a good impact on us? The use of social media will have a bad impact if it is used in the wrong way. Excessive use of social media will affect the user's brain such as addiction, difficulty to focus and affect the user's emotions.

One of the factors that social media affects the brain is addiction. When using social media such as Tiktok, Instagram, Pinterest and Twitter, we will unknowingly keep scrolling for hours. Let's take the example of the Tiktok application. When using Tiktok application, we often scroll through videos on the homepage where it will never run out, after watching the previous video we will scroll to the next video, and it keeps repeating. 

In the world of social media there is such a thing as a social media Algorithm, Social media Algorithms are a way of sorting posts in a users' feed based on relevance instead of publish time. Social networks prioritize which content a user sees in their feed first by the likelihood that they'll actually want to see it (Brent Barnhart, 2021) In Tiktok of course there is an Algorithm, sometimes when we like a dance video then the following video and so on will appear dance videos, as well as if we like funny videos and so on, The Algorithm will continue to exist so that we will unconsciously feel addicted to continue playing social media and watching videos that we like. 

That's one way social media affects the brain of its users, because of this the brain produces dopamine, a hormone associated with pleasure. When the body responds to more dopamine, the brain will automatically assume that playing social media is a useful activity and needs to be repeated. However, the positive feelings experienced in using social media are only temporary. If you keep repeating it, of course it can trigger addiction. This is what can make a person addicted to social media. ( Aprinda Puji, 2021). Playing social media can give happiness to the users, that's why getting away from social media is very difficult so many people are addicted to playing social media.

Social media makes it difficult for users to stay focus. The human brain has a certain amount of storage space, and playing social media causes users to unintentionally enter information that isn't necessary, which reduces brain capacity and makes it challenging to concentrate. Social media will continue to send us notifications that we don't even need, such as video notifications that are going viral on Twitter and Tiktok. 

Sometimes without realizing it while doing something like for example doing an assignment, then suddenly get a chat notification from a friend, without realizing it distracted from the previous task and immediately reply to the chat, so that it keeps repeating. 

This puts our brains in a state of constant multitasking, thereby hindering our ability to focus and shortening our attention span. Researchers say heavy social media users become less able to ignore distractions in general, which leads to poorer cognitive performance and shrinks parts of the brain associated with maintaining concentration (Hana Frenette, NeuLine Health). When a person's mind is at one point of focus and then playing on social media, it makes the focus split into two which causes difficulty to focus.

The use of social media has a big influence on the emotions of users. By playing social media we can see a lot of people's lives out there which causes many people to compare their lives with others that leads to insecurity, stress, depression, anxiety, loneliness and so on. 

Neuroscientists are studying the effects of social media on the brain and finding that positive reaction such as someone liking your tweet or photos on instagram can trigger the same kind of chemical reaction that is caused by gambling and recreational drugs. 

According to an article by Harvard University researcher Trevor Haynes, when you get a social media notification, your brain sends a chemical messenger called dopamine along a reward pathway, which makes you feel good. Dopamine is associated with food, exercise, love, sex, gambling, drugs of course social media (Kelly Mcsweeney 2019). So what happens if people don't get positive reactions or reduce interactions on their social media?