Why do I feel so rewarded?
I've been an avid user of social media from their early beginning. I registered and actively used every social media that has been popular in the latest ten years:
- Myspace
- Netlog
- MSN Messenger
- Snapchat
You name it, I'm registered, I’ve been active, I tried it, and eventually gave it up.
Lately I started thinking why using them is so rewarding and I had some (probably not so new) conclusions. I think that social media— especially Facebook, since it's the most sophisticate and biggest and most successful social media ever created — are exploiting a loophole in our brain.
But let’s start with an old fashioned addiction: the television. Nobody is talking much about television anymore, we got used to it. But I noticed a parallel between the television and the feed scrolling, which is the main engine of the loophole I mentioned before: zapping.
Scrolling social media feeds is like zapping from channel to channel
Why are we zapping?
Think about: zapping is a weird activity. Jumping from channel to channel while looking at pictures and sounds. You have no control on what’s going on, except you can jump to the next channel. It’s Tinder for content.
Somehow our brain likes that. I guess it’s the sensation of choice, of entertainment and the high hopes of finding an interesting content — which could be the next one. Somehow our brain releases a reward for this activity even if it’s not an useful activity at all.
Zapping is the loophole.
What is Facebook now? It’s a video after another video after another photo, with pictures and sounds. I’m sure you see the parallelism now. Your brain is wired to enjoy that kind of interaction, and since Facebook tailors those content exactly for you the hook is even more powerful.
I’d love to see real-time dopamine levels in order to understand the behaviour of our brain when it interacts with social media feeds.
Facebook is the new television.