Social media and dopamine: why you can’t stop scrolling
There are times when I sit in bed endlessly scrolling through social media. Even when the clock slowly creeps to 1 AM, I refuse to put my phone down. I know I am not the only one who has this addictive feeling towards their phone, so why do we feel this way?
Social media takes advantage of our brain’s reward system by activating the ultimate feel-good neurotransmitter: dopamine. Dopamine is a chemical in our brain that is released when something positively enforcing happens to us. It’s our brain’s way of remembering that certain actions create enjoyable rewards, motivating us to repeat these actions. This release of dopamine can be from eating delicious food, exercising, or getting a notification that someone liked our photo. So how does this reward system work and how do our smartphones tap into it?
Our brain has 4 major dopamine pathways in our brain, creating a communicative network of neurons that uses dopamine as a secret code[1]. Each pathway is responsible for translating dopamine into specific cognitive or motor functions. The reward system uses three of these pathways: the mesocortical, mesolimbic, and nigrostriatal pathways. The reward pathways are unique in their functions, but they are all activated during a reward response. When an action has continuously positive rewards, the brain’s response builds a stronger and more connected pathway via the process called long term potentiation[2]. When this occurs, the brain can send dopamine reward signals through the pathway faster and more efficiently, making you feel good instantly and increasing your motivation to do that action again.
Every time we get a notification from our phone, we get an instant increase of dopamine, motivating us to check and stay on our phone for longer than we probably wanted to. The extreme of this motivation can be shown through what scientists are calling “phantom text syndrome,” where a ringtone or alert is heard/felt by the user even when there isn’t one[3]. The brain wants you to check your phone, so it creates a reason through phantom texts. This phenomenon can be compared to cravings (and even to addiction). Although social media creates a platform for knowledge, creativity, and connection, we should be mindful of the time spent on it and how the reward system keeps us scrolling.
Citations:
Björklund A, Dunnett SB. Dopamine neuron systems in the brain: an update. Trends Neurosci. 2007 May;30(5):194-202. doi: 10.1016/j.tins.2007.03.006. Epub 2007 Apr 3. PMID: 17408759.
Ghanavati E, Salehinejad MA, De Melo L, Nitsche MA, Kuo MF. NMDA receptor-related mechanisms of dopaminergic modulation of tDCS-induced neuroplasticity. Cereb Cortex. 2022 Feb 15:bhac028. doi: 10.1093/cercor/bhac028. Epub ahead of print. PMID: 35165699.
Lin YH, Chang LR, Lee YH, Tseng HW, Kuo TB, Chen SH. Development and validation of the Smartphone Addiction Inventory (SPAI). PLoS One. 2014 Jun 4;9(6):e98312. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0098312. PMID: 24896252; PMCID: PMC4045675.
