THE SCIENCE OF SOCIAL MEDIA ADDICTION & INFINITE SCROLLING:

According to a study by Dr. Zelazny of the University of Pittsburgh every day if a person spends more than 2 hours on social media, then stress, depression and suicidal thoughts increase in their life.

In social networking sites like Instagram, people only show the highlights of their lives.

We never see the downs of their life.

When we see other people, we compare our lives to their lives.

So, social media makes us anxious, compels us to doubt ourselves.

A Netflix documentary has also been made for the same, named 'The Social Dilemma' in which it is shown how social media controls our life to a great extent on the basis of its algorithm.

Our brain releases a chemical named 'Dopamine'.

Dopamine is the same chemical that is released into our bodies when we take drugs, when we gamble and earn money, or when we consume alcohol.

Dopamine makes us feel a sense of happiness.

And the special thing about Dopamine is that when it is released into our body, we crave for even more Dopamine which is why we do the activity, through which Dopamine is released, again and again.

Now, all the social networking sites Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter

are designed in such a way that the release of Dopamine in our mind can be maximum.

It is designed on the basis of the 'Skinner Box Experiment’.

They made a small box and placed a pigeon in it.

In that box, there was a button that the pigeon could press and there was a small hole below from where the pigeon would get food.

They wanted to teach the pigeon that whenever they are hungry, they can press the button to ask for food.

But, after some days they added a twist to the experiment.

Instead of giving food to the pigeon every time it pressed the button, they gave food after it pressed for 2, or 3 or sometimes even 5 times, in a very random pattern.

The pigeons whose pattern was kept normal, that if you press this button once you'll get food,

were behaving very normally.

But the pigeons who were randomly given food, went crazy. They kept pressing the button every second of every minute, thinking that they'll get food now.

Because there was no pattern of giving food,

Even they didn't know when they'll get food and when they'll not.

And in the greed of getting food, they kept pressing the button every second.

The same thing happens in the case of social media.

Our mind releases Dopamine when we see such a post, a reel, a comment, or a tag that entertains us.

And in that search, that maybe it will be the next post or next reel we keep scrolling through it.

And because of this, even though we feel guilty that 'Why am I spending so much time on social media?' we do it over and over again, just for that Dopamine release.

Many social media companies have special people called Attention Engineers who use psychology and optimize the apps in such a way that you spend an ample amount of time on that app.

A very good example of this is that Instagram has recently changed its algorithm.

Earlier, when you used to open Instagram, you saw posts on the basis of their upload time

like the recently uploaded post used to be on the top, then the earlier post, and so on.

But now, you'll see the most popular post at the top.

So that in your mind, every second, whenever you open Instagram and see, dopamine will release.

So that you stay on the app longer.