What happens in your brain when you see likes on your Moments?

When teenagers see their photos get lots of "likes" on social media, the same areas of their brains are activated as when they eat chocolate and win a large sum of money, according to a UCLA study.

Researchers from the Ahmanson-Lovelace Brain Imaging Center at UCLA told 32 teenagers aged 13 to 18 that they were using a photo-sharing social software similar to Instagram. The researchers showed them 148 photos and the number of "likes" they received on a computer screen, 40 of which were provided by the teenagers, and the number of "likes" was assigned by the researchers. At the same time, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was used to analyze the brain activity of the teenagers, and the process lasted for a total of 12 minutes.

Lauren Sherman, an author of the study and a researcher at the Brain Imaging Center and the UCLA Children's Digital Media Center, said that when teenagers saw their photos received many "likes", many brain regions were activated, and the highest level of activation was in a part of the striatum called the nucleus accumbens, which is part of the brain's reward circuit , which is particularly sensitive during adolescence. When teenagers saw their photos received many "likes", the researchers also observed activation in social brain regions and brain regions related to visual attention.

Teens are heavily influenced by how many likes a picture has when deciding whether to like it. Sherman said that half of the teens were shown the same picture with a lot of likes, while the other half had almost no likes. When teens saw the picture with a lot of likes, they were more likely to like it. Teens' reactions to information will change depending on whether the information is liked by their peers, even if those peers are strangers.

The research was published in Psychological Science .

Mirella Dapretto, another author of the study and a professor of psychiatry and biobehavioral sciences at the UCLA Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior, said that in real life, peer influence is huge. In this study, the teenagers faced virtual strangers, but they still showed peer influence, both in their brain activity levels and in the photos they chose to like. He believes that in real life, this effect will be particularly obvious when teenagers see "likes" from people who are important to them.

Should parents be worried about social media? Researchers say that like other media, social media has its pros and cons.

Daoretto said that many teens and young adults make friends online with strangers, so teens are more likely to be influenced by bad friends, so parents should be concerned. Patricia Greenfield, another author of the study and director of the UCLA Children's Digital Media Center, said that parents used to know or know their children's friends, but when they make hundreds of friends online, parents have no way of knowing or knowing their friends.

But Sherman also cited several advantages of social media. If a teenager's friends share positive behaviors on social media, the teenager will be influenced by them. It is even more important for parents to understand the people their teenagers are connected to online and their behaviors on social media. In addition, as previous research has shown, teenagers' self-identity can be influenced by the opinions of others, which is also reflected in this study.

Peer pressure to conform has always existed, will clicking “likes” online be any different?

In the study, adolescents were presented with three types of pictures: neutral pictures - food and friends, dangerous pictures - tobacco and alcohol, etc., and pictures of themselves. Greenfiled, a distinguished professor of psychology at UCLA, said that for all pictures, adolescents were more likely to like the pictures that had received more "likes". The bandwagon effect was particularly evident for adolescents' own pictures, showing the importance of peer support.

When the adolescents viewed the risky images, activation levels in brain regions associated with cognitive control and response inhibition were lower than when they viewed the neutral images. These regions included the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex, bilateral prefrontal cortex, and lateral parietal cortex.

These brain regions are involved in decision-making, and can prevent or approve us from engaging in an activity, Dapretto said. The reduced activation in response to the dangerous images may have reduced the level of defensiveness in adolescents.

[Rare via sciencedaily]

From: Omelette