Social media hits dopamine receptors in seconds, mimicking a hunter-gatherer's reward after hours of hunting. The spike crashes hard, leaving you low-energy and scattered. Limiting yourself to four or five brief sessions a day prevents the worst of it.
What is a healthy relationship with social media? One way you reduce significantly the frequency of engagement. If you look at social media, you're effectively experiencing the same elevation in dopamine as a hunter gatherer would after five hours of hunting, but you're experiencing it within three or four seconds from opening the app. And therefore, because it rises so fast and the brain is just thinking, wow, I can't deal with this overstimulation. After you come off social media, you get this really significant crash. This is called phasic and tonic dopamine. you get this really significant crash and that creates this low mood, low energy, inattention type experience. When you're looking at social media, just going on it once or twice, like it's not going to do, it's going to create a stimulation in dopamine. Your brain is going to experience a bit of a crash, but it's okay if it happens, let's say, four or five times a day.
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