Social Media Influence vs Personal Decisions
How does it begin?
Whether it’s a new restaurant to try or the clothes that are worn for an important event, surely more than not everyone has had some sort of influence through social media. It can be seen throughout multiple platforms the need to sell and promote items, but many more try to connect with their viewers in order to be able to pitch their next sale. How does this influence what we believe in or our personal decisions? Does the influential effect of social media override our personal decisions? The short answer is yes. The feeling and need to belong oftentimes than not override personal boundaries, decisions, and promises. But how?
Dopamine = Happiness
To start off a common reason for people being influenced by social media will have to do with Dopamine. Dopamine is a neurotransmitter that plays a role in many body functions but it is commonly known for motivation and reward. There have been many studies to prove this beginning with Pavlov’s conditioning theory, one of his most famous experiments was when a dog was put to the test where a bell would ring and a sausage would be revealed, which made the dog salivate because of a reward reaction, releasing dopamine. After a few times, the dog would salivate instantly after hearing the bell without the sausage revealing that because of the expectation that there would be a sausage after ringing the bell. We can connect this to a reaction through social media. The way social media influencers describe their life it seems too good to be true, but they seem happier.. Wanting the same happiness people are influenced by whatever they sell thinking a haircut they saw an influencer with will make them more attractive, giving them a reward of confidence and expectation, releasing dopamine. Another example can be when in a group the feeling of someone complimenting you, or giving you a sense of approval and accomplishment can release dopamine because you feel the reward of being liked. This can often be dangerous in friend groups because for example if you’ve never smoked but all your friends are smoking, the need for approval might override the promise to yourself to never smoke because a good job is more rewarding in that second than a decision you’ve made years ago in many cases.
Hoax or Truth ??
Another big influence that social media has is probably the biggest reason why social media is so popular, fake news. Having access to anything in less than 30 seconds by just typing what you’re searching for is a crazy amount of power. But being able to post whatever you want on social media is an even crazier amount of power that people take advantage of. Especially when you generation relies solely on social media to gain information, fake news is crazier than ever. Peter Suciu in his article Spotting Misinformation On Social Media Is Increasingly Challenging describes “On social media, it is all too common for someone to use a single source to make our back up an argument while disregarding all the other facts. That in turn leads to such a spread of misinformation”. With just one video spreading misinformation goes viral it’s a domino effect that persuades thousands, millions, maybe even billions of people.
We can see during the Covid-19 spreading the misinformation that we were running out of paper, and water making people bulk buy, in order to feel safe like everyone else. Leaving medicine isles, and vitamin isles empty which is one of the most common things you would need in a lockdown.
Addiction is Money
Lastly scrolling through social media apps almost always ads will pop up, often times we click the X and keep scrolling… until that one sweater you see from your favorite store that is 30 % off. Marketing companies will do anything to have their customers engaged. Mary Boyle in her commentary opinion Wish the law would protect teens on social media? It can — but it needs an update mentions “ Facebook, Google, and Twitter designers use sophisticated neuroscience knowledge to add addiction and habit-forming features to social media platforms. Social media platforms use gamification tactics to manipulate users to stay engaged with the application longer “. Not only do big social media platforms want their users engaged they want them addicted to their app where the only thing that is important to them is their social media. This has overtaken seniors, adults, adolescents, and toddlers in every way.
This leads to addiction to our cellphones, computers, the internet in general damaging our mental, and physical health. But the marketing agency does not have our best interest at the end of the day we’re another change at making money.
So next time you’re scrolling through your phone for hours remember that you’re being influenced by social media creators every second.
P.S . Always fact-check information from Social Media! Like Hailey Bieber and Justin aren’t getting divorced ??
WORK CITE
Mary Boyle, Ph.D UCSD.
Dopamine reward prediction error coding Wolfram Schultz, MD, FRS
Dopamine reward prediction error coding.pdf
Images Credit
- https://mind.help/topic/social-media-addiction/
- Dopamine reward prediction error coding Wolfram Schultz, MD, FRS
- Dopamine reward prediction error coding.pdf
- https://science.howstuffworks.com/innovation/scientific-experiments/hypothesis.htm
