Social media is like a slot machine for your brain. Every time you get a like, comment, or new follower, your brain releases a little hit of dopamine.
- What’s dopamine? It’s a neurotransmitter (a chemical messenger) that makes you feel good and motivates you to repeat behaviors.
- Social media uses unpredictable rewards (sometimes lots of likes, sometimes barely any) — and your brain LOVES unpredictability. It keeps you coming back for more, just like gambling.
Bottom line: Dopamine makes social media feel rewarding — and it’s a big reason why you can’t stop checking your phone.
Cortisol: Stress in Your Pocket
Social media isn’t just fun; it can be stressful. Seeing arguments, bad news, or feeling left out can spike cortisol, your main stress hormone.
- Chronic social media stress keeps cortisol levels higher than normal.
- High cortisol over time can mess with memory, sleep, and mood.
Bottom line: Social media can turn your nervous system into a stress machine.
Social media affects serotonin, a neurotransmitter that helps stabilize mood and happiness.
- Constant comparison or negative feedback can lower serotonin levels, making you feel anxious or depressed.
- Positive interactions might give you a temporary serotonin boost—but it doesn’t last long if you’re addicted and always searching for the next high.
Bottom line: Social media can create emotional roller coasters, messing with your brain’s natural mood regulators.
The more you use social media, the more your brain actually rewires itself to crave quick hits of information and novelty:
- Your brain builds stronger pathways for fast, shallow attention rather than deep focus.
- The constant “newness” trains your brain to expect rapid rewards, making real-life tasks feel boring.
- Over time, your prefrontal cortex (the part that handles focus, planning, and impulse control) can become less active while your brain’s reward circuits grow stronger.
Bottom line: Social media reshapes your brain to seek fast rewards—and makes it harder to focus on anything else.e.
A 30-day break from social media will allow your brain to heal and increase happiness and decrease experiences of anxiety and depression. You can get a copy of my book “Social Media Reset: A 30-Day Guided Journey to Unplug, Reconnect with God, and Reclaim Your Joy to help you break any unhealthly dependence on it, but more than a social media break, it is a reset your soul and inspire you to live your life to the fullest and grow close to God. You’ll be so glad you took the journey! I 100% guarantee it!
With joy,
Allie
*This blog was created with the fabulous help of ChatGPT to help me more easily be able to provide you with helpful content. All writing on my blog is original, but I state when I utilized Chat GPT to help. It is important to me as an author to be transparent and make it clear when AI was used.
