Social media addiction cognitive consequence

What is an addiction? We could define it as the lack of control on doing, taking,

or using something at a point that it is a worrying situation. We know the common

drugs: weed, coke or even coffee and alcohol. But in this essay we will talk about

another drug, one that is in our pockets every day even when we are not noticing it. The

social media addiction is a reality that has been in our life since this platforms where

created. This essay will go through an analysis about the consequences of this addiction

within the brain of young adults.

According to the statistics more than the half of the world 59% uses any kind of

social media (Chaffey,2023) which means that as humans we live in a constant relation

with this communication tools. This relation may be causing several effect within our

minds, actually the social media addiction has reached a point in which it shares

characteristics with clinical gambling or use of drugs disorders. (Small,2020) the reality

is that Internet addiction is thought to affect 6% of people worldwide, although it affects

as much as 11% of people in particular places, like the Middle East. (Small, 2020).

It is important that we define when the usage of social media become

problematic, Problematic social media use is an addictive behavior characterized by

excessive worry about online activity, uncontrollable urges to access or use social

media, and spending so much time and energy on social media that it has a negative

impact on significant areas of one's life. (Chen, 2022) an addiction causes different

issues in the life of people that go through it. Then, it is important to understand how

social media affect the cognitive area of the people.

As everything in life social media has positive and negative effects within

people behavior. In the positive site, there are studies that had prove that the use of
social media can be helpful in the social aspect for some people, mostly adolescents that

are isolated in real life (O’Keeffe & Clarke-Pearson,2011) in fact social media can

improve their mental health quality. But, with lack of control within its usage, these

benefits can become a problem, there are studies that had prove that Social media

addiction can cause rumination, depression and even insomnia (Betul, 2020).

The fact is that social media takes advantage of the classical conditioning in

which the living beings brain works. Just like Pavlov’s dogs, the traditional method of

conditioning learning links environmental signals to unconditioned stimuli and the

resulting reactions(Pavlov,1987), we are conditioned to work towards getting a

reinforcement and avoiding a punishment. Then, we can stablish that the people -mostly

adolescents- use social media in a constant search of mental satisfaction (Wang, 2023).

We can take as an example Tik Tok, one of the most popular social media platforms. Its

design makes that any person could get to hundreds of people in minute, which

eventually traduces in likes, and is this little heart on the border of the screen which acts

like the reinforcement, 'Likes' are a form of incentive for social media users, aligning

with classic mechanisms of reward-based learning and facilitating habit and addiction

cycles. The nucleus accumbens showed increased activity in a functional MRI study

that mimicked the "Instagram experience" of viewing "liked" photos. (Sherman, 2016)

In addition to the reinforcement system, social media can cause a feeling of

getting lost within the screen. This may lead to experiencing a distorted sense of time

once the users are in the flow-like state, where they are unaware of how much time has

gone. With only a small number of buttons and menu options for users to explore, the

app design itself is simple and user-friendly, further facilitating entry into "flow." Given

that young people's attention spans are shortening in the twenty-first century, videos'

concise length is excellent. Users have an immersive experience because they fill the
full smartphone screen while playing. (Petrillo, 2021) this is taking once more Tik Tok

as an example, but the model is so effective that all social media platforms are copying

it son they can capture the attention of young adults.

Other aspect that causes social media addiction is that they work as a

randomized machine where you do not know what comes next, so you keep refreshing

the page and spending time on it looking for: a post, a message, a video, etc that you

like, Liu compares it with a slotting machine The "swipe down" feature needed to

refresh one's feed resembles pulling a slot machine lever, and the variable pattern of

reward in the form of posts, messages, notifications, videos, etc replicates the

intermittent reward pattern of winning or losing on a slot machine; this pattern keeps

users engaged under the illusion that the next play might be "the one."(2020) this

reinforces the idea that social media takes advantage of classical conditioning to keep us

attention focused on it.

In conclusion, the problematic usage of social media that may lead eve to

addictions is becoming more common each day. But this is not something that happens

casually, behind this addiction there is a cognitive process through which the brain goes.

This is based on the classical conditioning; the brain is predisposed to act towards

receiving a reinforcement. This is why when we get a like we feel mental satisfaction

and in consequence we publish more information in the hope of getting more of this

satisfaction. Also the design of the platforms is simple and keeps in mind creating a

immersive experience with small buttons and a big screen that covers up all our vision,

with this the platforms create a distorted sense of reality. Then when they get us to

spend hours watching the screen, the reinforcements comes again, working in the same

way as a slotting machine, we are reinforced when a good post comes to the screen and

the mental satisfaction is inevitable so you keep scrolling it does not matter that the next
post is not what you are looking for (a punishment) because maybe the next one will be

better (a reinforcement) and the mental satisfaction cycle starts again.

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