How Facebook addiction affects brain function

For many people, the desire to visit Facebook to put a "like" the next video, to check their personal messages or the wall, becomes almost insurmountable. And this is nothing more than a full-fledged dependence. The latest research on how this social network affects the brain, only confirms such a judgment.

Research

As it turned out, the dependence on "Facebook" can directly affect your brain. New research that was conducted with users who can not imagine a single second of their lives without a social network, showed that in their brain there is an increased excitement, which is typical for a person suffering from drug dependence. However, the parallel is not ideal, since compulsive activity may be similar, but the brain department responsible for generating such behavior among Facebook fans is excellent, unlike drug addicts. This means that people who are on Facebook are aware that similar reactions are taking place in their brains. Moreover, they can control their behavior - only they have no motivation for this, because they do not see the negative consequences as such.

Far-reaching consequences

Some studies have shown that Facebook and other social networks have a profound impact on people. For example, images in networks can spoil people's image of a beautiful body, which can lead to both depression and failures on a personal front. It is also worth noting that the photos of friends at a party where the person was not invited can be depressed. Recently, the terms "dependence on facebook" or even "Facebook-addiction" have been increasingly used, but there are still heated debates about whether it is really possible to compare dependence on a social network with a full-fledged drug addiction.

Facebook and brain

To understand how this social network affects the human brain, the scientists asked a group of students to fill out a questionnaire in which the symptoms of dependence on the social network, such as those observed by drug addicts, were presented. After that, the scientists used MRI to scan the brain of the participants of the experiment while they were scanning a series of images, some of which belonged to Facebook, and some were not. Students were told when to press or not to press a button when viewing each of the images. And those people who scored more points in the survey showed a much higher response speed to images associated with Facebook. They also clicked the button much quicker when they saw a traffic sign similar to the social network logo.

What does it mean?

As a result, it turns out that if you are sitting in the car with such a person, then it will react much more quickly to the notification in the phone from the social network than to the traffic signs, which can be dangerous. This is the power of Facebook. People dependent on the social network were particularly active in the amygdala, which is responsible for impulsive behavior. But in this case, unlike drug addicts, such people do not have violations in the prefrontal cortex - most likely, because the study involved ordinary people, and not those who really depend on Facebook.

Dependence on Facebook?

The predilection for a social network is caused by a combination of biological, psychological and socio-cultural factors. However, a study conducted by scientists does not prove the fact that people dependent on Facebook can be put on one step with real addicts, dependent, for example, on cocaine or heroin. It is a dependence that a person can still control if he has the motivation for this.