You wake up in the morning, only to hear a clatter of notifications from your phone. Let me guess. New messages. New posts from your friends. New reels from influencers. You don’t want to miss out, so you start scrolling. And scrolling, and scrolling, and scrolling… 

That’s the addictive nature of social media at work. It hooks your brain, and you never get off the hook.

How does social media addict its audiences?

In 2023, a lawsuit was filed by 41 states and the District of Columbia against Meta, the parent company of Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp, accusing the company of planting addictive features on its platforms that would cause children to use them compulsively at the cost of their mental wellbeing. While the lawsuit is ongoing and the verdict has not been released, experts note that social media platforms indeed hijack our brains through several well-calculated, cunning tactics to foster addiction.

The first method is “intermittent reinforcement”, defined as “the delivery of a benefit or reward at irregular intervals”. Our phones are like slot machines, inconsistently and randomly delivering us information that caters to our personal preferences and interests. The desire for such information is difficult to resist, causing social media users to unconsciously return to those platforms at a consistent rate, regular customers at the lottery. Users may even turn on notifications that signal any potential updates on those platforms, enticing you to check and refresh your feed more often. It is concluded through studies that teenagers are most susceptible to this method due to the incomplete development of their brain regions involved in resisting temptation, as compared to adults.

Another method is “dopamine secretion”. Dopamine, generally known as the “happy hormone”, plays a vital role in the means our brains receive rewards. Positive social interaction, such as receiving favourable attention on social media through likes, comments and reposts, contributes to a larger rush of dopamine that encourages us to return to those platforms. Sufficient repetition of such positive interaction transmits the message to the brain that there is a strong causal link between social media and the feeling of happiness. This may even cause our brains to release dopamine in anticipation of social media activity, creating an endless loop of eagerness to continue our social media use.

Should we stop using social media?

The consequences of addiction to social media can be dire. With our brains manipulated to respond to the information rushing through platforms, the constant distraction from social media can lead to an endless cycle of “doom-scrolling” that pries us away from our tasks at hand, leading to decreased productivity that may severely affect our daily lives and work.  Social media users may also encounter a distorted sense of reality as others tend to only share the highlights of their lives, leading to feelings of inadequacy and anxiety that may smash one’s mental health.

I personally have tried quitting social media for about a month, only responding to texts for work and turning off my phone whenever possible. I was left in a state of serenity where I focused solely on myself and improving my life and work, ignoring all the digital hustle that was going on. I knew I was going to miss some updates from my peers’ lives; maybe a couple of online trends or someone’s birthday celebration; but it did feel amazingly refreshing. I began seeing the world from a different perspective – with my senses instead of through the lens of social media and the opinions of other social media users.

Of course, eventually, I had to switch Instagram back on; it seemed impossible to completely disconnect from the digital world where all my friends were living. And social media still had its perks. It provided me with up-to-date information regarding work opportunities and worldwide news, allowed me to distribute knowledge and raise awareness on topics I cared about (like this article) and it allowed me to maintain communication with my friends who were located in various cities around the world. Given a high level of discipline and awareness of the mechanism behind social media, I find it possible to steer social media instead of letting it steer me.