How Social Media is Changing Your Brain and What You Can Do About It

Social media is now completely ingrained in the fabric of our society. In fact, social media sites are currently being used by 1/3 of the entire world. There are of course many reasons why people love to use social media. We’re all familiar with the many benefits that social media can provide, like worldwide connectivity that can help people find love, friendship, jobs and pretty much anything you need.

While the benefits of social media are well understood, there are some unintended negative consequences as well that researchers are now starting to uncover. Specifically, researchers have uncovered that social media changes the way your brain and nervous system are wired. One of the reasons for this is because it provides immediate rewards with very little effort. This causes your brain to rewire itself, making you desire this stimulation. Social media activates the reward center of your brain through the release of dopamine – your body’s feel good chemical. Every time you receive a Facebook ‘like’ or other positive reinforcement through social media, you also receive a dopamine hit that makes you feel good. This means your body is physiologically rewarding you for your social media use, making you crave it more. For some people, this can lead to a social media addiction that can have a detrimental impact their mental health.

Studies have also shown that social media use, particularly heavy usage, can reduce your brains ability to filter out interference, making you more susceptible to distractions, as well as making it harder for you to think deeply, focus or concentrate for extended periods of time. It can even make it harder for you to remember things and can keep you stuck in a state of perpetual distraction and constant disruption.

What Can You Do About It?

The above are only some of the ways that social media use can impact you in ways that you may not have realized. The real question though is what can you do about it? Luckily, our brains have good plasticity so if you decide to change your habits, you can change your brain too.

One of the things you can do is start to become more aware of your social media usage and why you are using it. You can start to log how many minutes or hours you’re using social media each day. You can also do a bit of self reflection to uncover why you decided to check your social media feed when you did.

This kind of information can help you get a clearer picture of your overall social media use and motivations behind it. This can help you decide if you even need to change any of your habits or not. If so, it can serve as a baseline to help you come up with incremental goals that can help you make the changes you want to make.

One of the most effective types of strategies for this revolves around setting limitations on yourself and developing healthy habits that reinforce those new constraints that you’ve set. This could involve choosing to disconnect from technology for a set period of time each day, eliminating all other distractions and engaging in an activity that requires you to maintain focus for a certain amount of time.

Cultivating self-control and discipline can go a long way here. Also, understanding the ‘why’ and what it is that you really stand to gain from taking control of your social media usage can be a fantastic catalyst to help you stay motivated to achieve your goal.

Sources:

1. http://ed.ted.com/featured/qQzsdX2Y#review
2. https://thetempest.co/2016/06/06/news/science/5-ways-social-media-is-changing-our-brains/
3. http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/entry/internet-changing-brain-nicholas-carr_us_5614037de4b0368a1a613e96
4. http://socialnetworking.lovetoknow.com/Advantages_and_Disadvantages_of_Social_Networking