Episode 18: The Neuroscience of Too Much Social Media

Social media is omnipresent. Mindless scrolling through TikTok and Instagram reels is just a part of our daily lives now. Whether it's cat videos, funny dances, or cool outfits, online content fills our excess time, entertains us, and keeps us connected with our friends and the people we look up to. As my housemate says, sometimes, we’re living in the REEL world, not the REAL world. 

But it's also no secret that too much social media is not very good for our psyche and our brains. Curious why? Come and listen to learn a little bit more about the neuroscience of spending tooooooo much time on InstaSnapTok.

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Citations below:

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Montag C, Markowetz A, Blaszkiewicz K, et al. Facebook usage on smartphones and gray matter volume of the nucleus accumbens. Behavioral Brain Research. 2017;329:221-228. doi:10.1016/j.bbr.2017.04.035

Arias-Carrión O, Stamelou M, Murillo-Rodríguez E, Menéndez-González M, Pöppel E. Dopaminergic reward system: a short integrative review. International Archives of Medicine. 2010;3(1):24. doi:10.1186/1755-7682-3-24

Jan M, Soomro S, Ahmad N. Impact of social media on self-esteem. Ssrn.com. Published August 31, 2017. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3030048

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Will GJ, Rutledge RB, Moutoussis M, Dolan RJ. Neural and computational processes underlying dynamic changes in self-esteem. FeldmanHall O, ed. eLife. 2017;6:e28098. doi:10.7554/eLife.28098

Cacioppo JT, Cacioppo S. The growing problem of loneliness. The Lancet. 2018;391(10119):426. doi:10.1016/s0140-6736(18)30142-9

Chunliang Feng, Li Wang, Ting Li, Pengfei Xu, Connectome-based individualized prediction of loneliness, Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, Volume 14, Issue 4, April 2019, Pages 353–365, https://doi.org/10.1093/scan/nsz020

Alkozei A, Smith R, Pisner DA, et al. Exposure to Blue Light Increases Subsequent Functional Activation of the Prefrontal Cortex During Performance of a Working Memory Task. Sleep. 2016;39(9):1671-1680. doi:10.5665/sleep.6090