What goes through your mind when someone likes your Facebook posts? Turns out, a lot.
In research published in
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, researchers found that they could predict people's Facebook use by seeing how their brains reacted to positive social feedback.
Specifically, a region called the nucleus accumbens, which processes rewarding feelings about food, sex, money and social acceptance became more active in response to praise for oneself compared to praise of others. And that activation was associated with more time on the social media site.
Everyone loves social affirmation. And it is addictive!
On the social media site, the pleasure deriving from attention, kind words, likes, and LOLs from others occurs only sporadically. Such a pattern for rewards is far more addictive than receiving a prize every time, in part because the brain likes to predict rewards, and if it can’t find a pattern, it will fuel a behavior until it finds one. So if the rewards are random, the quest may continue compulsively.
While the research is still new, it does lend credence to why people spend so much time on Facebook. What do you think?