7 Ways Social Media Changes Your Brain
The internet is a wild place that's given us many good
things, and just as many not-so-good things. Whether you slot social media into
either camp is entirely up to you. But one thing experts are starting to
understand is how social media changes your brain. In the grand scheme of
things, the virtual world is still in its infancy, which means it's likely that
the long-term effects of all of this online living won't be known for decades.
And, in an attempt to uncover both positive and negative consequences of social
media, neuroscientists are starting to study some of the effects that online
social networking has on the human brain.
One surprising finding is that the size of your online
social network can actually change your brain — in a good way. "The number
of social contacts declared publicly on a major web-based social networking
site was strongly associated with the structure of focal regions of the human
brain," a study published in the journal Proceedings of The Royal Society: Biological Sciences revealed.
While social media often gets bashed for its negative
implications, the study found that people with large online social networks
were better at forming memories, and were more likely to remember names and
faces than those with smaller online networks. So, if you have eleventy-million
Twitter followers, it might actually be really good for you. But, not all of
the effects are so positive, and these are some other ways social media changes
your brain, according to science.
1. Social Media Can Improve Your Memory
Unlike dusty old photo albums that are only pulled off the
shelf at family gatherings or high-school reunions, posting photos and events
on social media actually improves your memory of certain events. "Events
that were reported to be posted online were much more likely to be recalled
than those not posted online," Professor Qi Wang, author of a study
published in the journal Memory, is quoted as saying in The Cornell Daily Sun.
"This is also independent of whether the participant viewed the event to
be important." What's more, social-media posts that include pictures can
significantly improve memory recall.
2. Social Media Can Activate Your Brain's Reward Center
Having your posts liked, and liking other people's posts, on
social media activates your brain's reward center. This is one of the reasons
why social scrolling can be so addictive. What's more, the more likes a post or
photo has, the greater the reward. "Viewing photos with many (compared
with few) likes was associated with greater activity in neural regions
implicated in reward processing, social cognition, imitation, and
attention," a study published in the journal Psychological Science revealed.
3. Too Much Social Media Can Be Bad For Your Mental Health
While it can be beneficial in small doses, maintaining
mostly online friends as opposed to IRL friends can have a negative impact on
your mental health. A study published in the journal the American Journal of Epidemiology found that found that IRL
interactions led to more positive feelings than online interactions. One of the
reasons for this is because people tend to compare themselves to others on
social media. This is damaging is because people tend to present the best
version of themselves online, which means that the comparisons aren't based in
reality.
4. Social Media Can Reduce Your Attention Span
It's no secret that social scrolling is an ideal way to
avoid what you should be doing. A study in the Proceedings of the NationalAcademy of Sciences found that heavy social media users performed worse at
being able to effectively switch from one task to another than moderate to
light social media users. "These results suggest that heavy media
multitaskers are distracted by the multiple streams of media they are
consuming," the study authors wrote.
5. Social Media Can Disrupt Your Sleep
Can't sleep? Your phone, computer, and tablet might be to
blame. Medical Daily reported that the type of blue light that's emitted from
your devices could be keeping you awake at night. Insomnia can lead to more
scrolling, which creates a vicious cycle of wakefulness. If you want to get
some serious shut-eye, experts recommend disconnecting from your devices after
9 p.m.
6. Social Media Could Make You A Follower, & Not In A Good Way
Spending too much time on social media activates herd
mentality. This means you may lose your ability to think for yourself and form
your own opinions because you're more likely to go along with what's most popular,
according to a study published in the journal Information Systems Frontiers. Basically, it's like being stuck in
a virtual version of the movie Heathers.
7. Social Media Can Mess With Your Nervous System
If you've ever thought your phone was vibrating when it
wasn't, you could be suffering from phantom vibration syndrome, according to a
study published in the journal Computers In Human Behavior. This means that
your nervous system is hypersensitive and reacts even when your phone is not
vibrating, which is a form of hyper vigilance.
Like most things you enjoy, social media is beneficial in
moderate doses. However, it's important not to overdo it if you want to avoid
becoming a member of the phantom-vibration herd, a sub culture of people
suffering from hyper vigilance, insomnia, and a decreased attention span.
Because, Black Mirror should just be
a show on Netflix and not a premonition for the future of society.
See you all tomorrow.
Buh-bye.
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