How social media addiction changes our brain?
Apparently, most of people are living with decentralized new attention economy. In today’s Age of Information, our own attention has become a scarce resource. In the past, we were the customers, now, our attention has become the product.
In the attention economy, our attention is constantly borbarded with information, from social media, televison. An easily distracted audience means that marketers must devise new strategies. As a result, human attention is commodifying and harvesting this attention is now part of the revenue strategy. https://contentdiving.com/2024/06/07/engineering-subliminal-messages-consumerism-programming-to-nation/
We live in a constantly shifting context of addictive hooks. Furthermore, we also live in an attention soceity that seeks to take possession of our minds from all directions. The new face of addiction is digital drugs. Therefore, decentralized overstimulation captured our attention. In consequnces, our focus capacity is draining day to day.
Limbic Capitalism
In matter of fact, we are all vulnerable to social approval. We really care what other people think of us. Premodern problem was a scarcity. But the modern problem of overcoming scarcity turns on it’s head and becomes a postmodern problem : that of abundance and excess . We’ve built civiliziation and progress on the pursuit of pleasure and the avoidance of pain. David Courtright has called limbic capitalism.
It is a technological advanced way of doing business that encourages ‘excessive compulsion and addiction.’ it is targeting the limbic system – our quick emotional reactions, feelings, our deepest evolutionary desires, our base impulses- sugar, money, celebrity, sex , gambling, luxury. Under limbic capitalism, those hooks display in corporate sign, logos, headlines, notifications, games.
How overstimulation is ruining our life ?
Mitchell Kapor predicted this effect in 1993: ” We could wind up with networks that have the principal effect of fostering addiction to a new generation of electronic narcotics (glitzy, interactive multimedia successors to Nintendo and MTV.) Their principal themes revolving around instant gratification through sex and violence, mega corporations determine content and use infinitive tools by pushing mindless consumption of things we don’t need and aren’t good for us. ”
Likewise, our identity is becoming virtual. Technology is shaping all of us whether we like it of not. Thus, our thoughts and mind are a commodity for buying and selling according to attention marketplace studies. Close to %80 of all content on social media is generated by about %10 of the users.
Big Reward : Dopamine
Internet has exposed peoples to goal they barely new existed, and wearable tech devices have made goal tracking effortless and automatic. Metrics , analytics and the comparing of yourself to everyone on the planet, closes the gap between performance and possibility. What is interesting about this reward molecule-dopamine that it might be more important for expectations of reward than the reward itself. That is why dopamine is central to addiction. The dopamine released is a reward for behaviour that we assume is good, fun, exciting and social. According to many psychologiest estimation that 1 in 10 american qualify for social media addiction. https://www.addictioncenter.com/drugs/social-media-addiction/
The problem with dopamine is that we wake up in the morning and our dopaminergic doors are full. So what happens is that we have a reserve at dopamine and if we want something with delayed gratification and our dopamine stores are high. Doctor K is giving a good example in this point. He emphasizes that if we tap into technolgy and invades our circuitry in our brain, it literally is like squeezing most of the juice out of the lemon first thing in the morning. In the middle of the day, our dopamine depletes.
Attention Economy
What we pay attention to is our life. Because it allows us to prioritize information. The attention economy -a subpart of limbic capitalism- is to dangle digital drugs that are likeable, clickable, repetable, that entice, persuade us. Notifications has been compelled us to click to see what’s new? The opportunity cost of screen time is impossible to calculate.
Attention engineers and big tech giansts work on the possibilities of you opening an app at a certain time of day. In a particular, the best way to predict what you will click like on or share, sales in your inbox work on the chances of you responding to a specific percentage off. Moreover, they need to add the desing principles what happened is that the attention economy in this race for attention got more and more competitive.
For instance, game designers use compelling feedbacks rewards, sounds, flashes, animations that reinforces the reward of that little dopamine hit. App developers are reducing the barrier between impulse and action. They know that once we look at one post, we are stuck for 45 minutes. With mindlessly scrolling, the price of the impulsive distraction is becoming way higher. So that, they hook us for a few minutes and we lose an hour. For instance, if we are distracted and pulled away, get back to the same level of focus takes 23 minutes. This is a price of those fast jumps.
Infinite Appetite for Distractions
Between 2019 and 2023 average mobile screen time shot up by %23 from 2 hours and 56 minutes and 3 hours and 46 minutes. The average user now checks their phone 96 times per a day. A 2022 study that our reading comprehension declines when we read a form a screen even if the text exacatly the same as it is on the paper. At the University of Chicago researchers call this brain drain. Whereas, the human brain has limited capacity to process information. We have to prioritize what we focus on. When our phone is nearby , it competes for cognitive resources and our brain must work extra hard to resist it’s temptation. https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/691462
On the other hand, we are informatic monsters who want to acquire permanent skills with premature ideas . The future is placing and mounting into the present. Significantly, the first victim of this fluid world is our own focus and attention span. Above all, we need to aware that the price of changing focus.
Neuroplasticity
Do you want to get control over the using technology?
Despite of digital drugs are detrimental on our attention, we have good capacity to overcome it. We should save our brains from digital dissociation. In this point, neuroplasticity has the ability for your brain to change its structure and its neuronal mconnectivity. By hacking into that process of neuroplasticity, we can literally have brand new brain. Nonetheless, the prompting our brain to restructure itself is the attention and the duration of our attention.
Our sense of identiy requires a internal discovering rather than externalize the attention. Thereby, we can empower our capability by diving into flow of state.
Our brain requires the more we practice focusing our attention. In case of short content consuming, we don’d have to force ourselves to focus. It does all the focusing for you. So what started to happen with our attention is instead of taking the stairs, we are taking the elevator all the time.
The benefits of boredom
When we look at the calories and attention economy , we can see that boredom is your brain’s way of punishing you for not giving it dopamine !
Once you understand the human biology and structure of mind, there is a distinctive notion in this sense. Most of us tended to percieve that boredom is bad. But, boredom is actulaly about driving us towards productive action. It is a fundamental human drive. https://www.theguardian.com/global/2020/may/03/why-its-good-to-be-bored
Why do we always have the best ideas in the shower? Default Mode Network provides us to reach things that are hidden under our counciousness. Moreover, our ability to generate new ideas and creative thoughts probably stems from our brain’s Default Mode Network. This network in the brain is linked to creative thinking.
When our mind is a fueled-up racing car, such event provide an incubation habitata for creative ideas. Thus, we can clear some blockage in our head. At the same time, changing our environment exposes our brain to new stimuli. And finally, these new stimuli give us new insight.
Related Posts
Geleneğin Tahliyesi
Femme Fatale
