Your Unexpected Addiction
Editor’s note: I use the words “news” and “social media” interchangeably, as I see both as avenues of information consumption as it relates to people, places, things, and events.
In our last blog post we talked about our obsession with the news and social media. You’ll want to start there first before reading on.
If you need your memory jogged, here is a quick outline of the main points we covered:
We are attached and utterly dependent on our devices to provide us with dopamine hits on a consistent basis, and it’s likely to get even worse.
Social media and news websites and apps provide us with information and entertainment. Each time we ‘pull to refresh’, our heart beats a little faster in hopes of finding something new and noteworthy.
Today, we’re talking more about the why behind our obsession with social media.
It’s our opinion that the better we understand our weird-ass relationship with social media, the more likely + capable we are of making a positive + healthier change for ourselves.
This question of why leads us to the question of what exactly dopamine is and how it’s related to our social media obsession.
Dopamine is a neurotransmitter involved in processing rewards. In fact, it is the final common pathway for all pleasurable, intoxicating, and rewarding experiences.
AKA it’s a pretty big deal for positive experiences.
While inherently linked to pleasure — on the flip side — it can also greatly contribute to pain. The more dopamine a drug or behavior releases, the more addictive it likely is.
So what gives us dopamine?
Anything pleasurable, from chocolate to sex, to hard drugs, to social media.
Yes, social media.
Unlike hard drugs, social media is unassuming in its addictive propensity — or this is what we tend to think initially. But like any strong addiction, over time, its affects grow exponentially.
According to Dr. Anna Lembke, quantity, potency, and novelty are the three factors that make anything addictive.
Unfortunately, social media is all of these things.
Quantity: There are countless apps to “socialize” AKA read about & look at other people and their behaviors.
Potency: Seeing news about people we know directly or feel tied to indirectly has great power over us, demanding our attention and, perhaps, our emotions.
Novelty: There is always new information coming at you in realtime.
And this is a problem because…?
Dr. Lembke states that “we live in a world in which we are saturated with dopamine and we live in a culture that encourages us to pursue it, but the ultimate end result of pursuing dopamine is to feel worse than when you started.”
The pursuit of dopamine promises more than it delivers AND keeps our brains desiring more and more on a continual basis.
Essentially, this chasing is an ineffective and destructive process for our brains, and most of us are unknowingly caught up in this on a daily — perhaps even hourly — basis.
With this basic chemical understanding of what social media does to our brains, we can better understand why it is so easy for us to become addicted.
The only way things will change is if we pause and give ourselves a chance to step back and remove ourselves from the simulation.
If you are ready for more support and guidance on this topic, we have some great news…
The True Core Challenge starts this weekend!
The True Core Challenge is where you sign up to pledge to stay off of all social media from Friday afternoon to Monday morning throughout the month of October.
Instead of mindless scrolling and consumption, we’ll be intentional about our time, leading us to clarity and direction as to the frequency we choose to invest our time in social media.
Interested in joining us? Click the button below to sign up!