The psychology of why social media is so addictive

Let’s take a deeper look into how social media is engineered to keep our attention.

Photo by Prateek Katyal on Unsplash

You’re sitting on your couch on a Friday evening.

There is nothing interesting on TV, and you can’t find a good show to watch on Netflix.

You grab your phone and start going through your applications.

Facebook. Snapchat. TikTok. Instagram. Youtube.

By the time you scroll through all your feeds, hours have passed without you even realizing it.

Does this sound familiar?

Source: https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2018/03/01/social-media-use-in-2018/

Even though your selection of social media applications might differ from the one above, there is a common theme — the influence and addiction of social media.

This social media addiction seems to be gripping many, with most Americans using at least one social media app daily.

Source: https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/chart/how-often-americans-are-using-social-media/

Even if we try to pull out of the addiction, they rope us back in with notifications from your emails, applications, and sometimes even a text.

“It would send me an email, and then a text message, and then a link to a photo of someone,” he says. “I could see how the program was trying to get me back on the platform and it made me feel really disgusted.” — Director of Social Dilema

But what is fueling this addiction in the first place?

Brain imaging studies have shown that Facebook addicted subjects exhibit similar neural responses to users of cocaine or gambling addicts.

It’s pretty insane to think that something that seems so harmless in nature could be compared to taking drugs.