Social media hijacks the brain's reward system the same way drugs do. Heavy users show shrinkage in the prefrontal cortex, the area that controls impulse and emotion. Your brain evolved to crave social signals like status and attraction, which platforms deliver on repeat.
What makes social media so addictive, and how does this addiction impact our cognitive health? Those who do what would be classified as like social media use disorder, basically addicted to social media, those people show changes in the brain that are reminiscent or quite similar to the brain changes in drug addiction. And what it really involves is a reduced volume of prefrontal cortical areas. So the prefrontal cortex is this really kind of executive director of the brain. It can help suppress emotions and control emotional reactions. But I think the reason why this is even an issue is because the reality is that the social nature of social media is real. We are seeing social cues, and that is powerful for the human brain. The human brain cares a lot about social information, and especially when you're seeing, you know, videos of people showing their wealth or pictures of love interests showing their physique, you know, things like this, there provides a lot of social reward and social information that can be very valuable and worth pursuing for the human brain.
The Library of Minds: Brain Coach: How to Stay Sharp When AI Does the Thinking | Jim Kwik
