SOUTH BEND, Ind. (WSBT) – Congress is being urged to require warning labels on social media, and the U.S. Surgeon General says platforms like Facebook and Instagram will have to disclose mental health risks to users under the age of 18. The risks range from depression to neurological disorders.
Social media grabs our attention because there are attention chemicals in our brains.
“We have something called a reward pathway, and dopamine is integral to the reward pathway. So essentially, dopamine is the feel-good hormone, so when we do things that make us feel good, like going out to dinner with friends or having a good social experience or eating a good meal, doing those things makes us feel good and releases dopamine which makes us want to pursue those activities more,” said Dr. Ambreen Ghori, a psychiatrist at the Bowen Center.
For Dr Ghori, social media further distorts what people already perceive as a world of criticism and ridicule.
“People who already suffer from depression have a hallmark symptom called cognitive distortions, where they see the world through a negative lens, and when they have this platform that can exacerbate that, they find themselves having more and more issues with symptoms like depression and anxiety,” Ghori said.
It takes 27 years for the brain to develop, and during that time, social media can hijack the nervous system, says Nancy Michael, director of neuroscience and behavior at the University of Notre Dame.
“Especially the younger the brain, these networks are not as fully developed. So the real danger is certainly in things like habit formation, but really in the displacement of all the other behaviors that the human nervous system needs and expects in order for the structure and function of the nervous system to grow in a balanced way,” Michael said.
Michael says students make extreme choices in both directions.
“We have a lot of students who have taken steps to not play the game anymore, and we have a lot of students who are not getting enough sleep because they’re doomscrolling until like 3 a.m.,” Michael said.
