How social networks affect your brain

The content of the article

• Memory improvement
• Increased desire for rewards
• The desire to change reality
• Distraction
• Sleep disturbance
• Loss of personality
• Loosening of the nervous system

The changes that arise due to the great Internet enthusiasm have just begun to be explored by specialists. Social networks are one of the largest and most poorly controlled user preferences. At the same time, the changes that they make in the human mind are not only negative, but also positive.

Memory improvement

Many events are specially photographed for posting on social networks. So they are remembered much better than the facts of life that are not reflected on the Internet pages. What is interesting: the memory of the event does not depend on the importance of the event itself, only the fact of publication on the social network matters.

Increased desire for rewards

Scrolling pages on social networks becomes more exciting when a person sees how many likes visitors put their posts or photos. Although this virtual assessment is based on subjective preferences, for many users it is of great importance. In this case, the influence of social networks on the human brain is negative, since it leads to the emergence of dependence on the opinions of others.

The desire to change reality

Another harm to social networks is that modern digital technologies make it easy to make changes to images by laying out an embellished version of yourself on a page. The main reason for such actions is the desire to look better in the eyes of users. In doing so, people cannot get rid of comparing themselves with others, which becomes a pathological attachment.

Distraction

Many people know that on the World Wide Web time flies quickly and often makes you forget about current affairs. Studies by foreign scientists show that active users of social networks switch from one task to another much worse than those who spend not so much time there. It’s hard for any person to keep track of several streams of information, as happens on Facebook and similar resources.

Sleep disturbance

Insomnia can be caused by a computer, smartphone or tablet. The blue light emitted by the screens leads to sleep disturbances. Prolonged insomnia creates a vicious cycle of wakefulness in which the nervous system does not get rest for days on end. If you want to sleep well at night, refuse to use gadgets after 9 pm.

Loss of personality

People who spend too much time in social networks tend to acquire herd instinct. This is manifested when a person loses the opportunity to think independently, prefers to be guided by the majority opinion and attaches great importance to ratings and rating system (the number of likes). Such an effect of social networks on a person leads to a decrease in the critical perception of reality. A person loses the objectivity of his own judgments, which is replaced by an orientation toward the popular views of other users.

Loosening of the nervous system

Trying to keep track of the actions of many friends forces the user to look at the screen every five minutes. Increased vigilance causes stress and quickly leads to nervous excitability. To describe this condition, a special term is proposed – “phantom vibration syndrome”. To people who suffer from it, it begins to seem that the smartphone is signaling incoming messages, but this does not happen. If there is a similar problem of dependence on social networks, the best option would be to contact a psychologist.