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Dopamine and Social Media

Writer: spartaacademics
spartaacademics
Sep 12
3 min read

Dopamine and Social Media

An Article by Angela Rooney


Dopamine is a monoamine neurotransmitter, or in other words, also a hormone. The main functions that dopamine has/does for the brain and neurological system would be having a main control over the reward system, physiological influences relating too, and influencing motor functions. This hormone functions by basing itself off of pleasure, and keeping you motivated and incentivized to keep getting more of whatever it is you are consuming, doing, and/or listening to that is giving you a satisfied and pleasured sensation. 


In this day and age, with so much unbridled freedom in terms of consumption of content and what people do themselves, a large problem is social media and short-form content such as reels, shorts, and quick videos. This relates to dopamine by it being a source of it in terms of the mind quickly getting little bursts of happiness and craving that output of dopamine, and therefore getting addicted to the ‘thrill’ and pleasure that the mindlessly scrolling is still presenting. Note that even in cases when doom-scrolling is involved, and the mind isn't truly processing the content/things that are being scrolled past, the subconscious does recognize the previous conscious want for dopamine, and therefore the stream of dopamine continues in the mind-addiction pending. 


When this happens, people's minds get conditioned to the excess of dopamine that is being provided with little to no effort, causing an instant gratification mechanism that causes more and more want for that same sensation of scrolling. 

There is almost no effort involved in scrolling-simply a small flick of the finger and opening of an app, then you have instant entertainment and rapture, opposed to doing something that may have been more fulfilling because it took more effort than opening social media. This causes an undermining of actual fulfillment, leaving everyone with a false sense of accomplishment and empty happiness made up by a small screen. 

The reason that people and generally society as a whole do still continue scrolling is simply as it gives them that pleasure. Social media, while not all bad, produces a very easy outlet for people to lose themselves in dopamine, as it does not reward patience, effort, nor time for a task, just allows this gratifying feeling to be easily taken. 


However, in young ages, this issue can be extremely dangerous, as while some older minds may have gotten chances when younger to actually consume dopamine effectively, younger minds from more recent generations are now being exposed to social media content at adolescent and pubescent ages, causing these undeveloped minds to become even more dependent on social media for a ‘pick-me-up’, source of happiness, or outlet for emotional or other issues, drowning it all away with mindless scrolling. 

Studies have shown that ~40% percent of children in the USA who are exposed to social media by the age of 12-13, have their needs for dopamine boosted by up to 30% percent and spend 3-5 hours on their phones/devices every day for the sole purpose of social media. 


In conclusion, social media and the overconsumption of it can be very dangerous to the mind and potentially addictive-especially for younger minds prematurely exposed to this, leading to advised caution approaching scrolling for all of society. 



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