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TikTok is a social media app where users can upload one-minute videos. The premise is very simple, yet the app has gained so much attention over the years. There was an estimated 85.3% user growth for TikTok in 2020 alone. What makes this app so successful?
When you’re scrolling, everything is condensed within a short video. A neuropsychologist Dr. Sanam Hafeez Psy.D., says that, "When you scroll and hit upon something that makes you laugh, your brain receives a hit of dopamine." Dopamine is basically a chemical in your brain that your brain registers as pleasure or happiness. So basically, TikTok is a platform where users are in search of constant, immediate doses of dopamine.
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Dopamine affects our attention spans. According to 2016 research in Current Biology, dopamine boosts cause people to pay more attention to similar things in the future. However, developed adult brain attention spans are not likely to become as influenced as someone who is younger.
Although these instant dopamine doses may not be affecting our attention spans, the fact that we are trying to focus on so many at one time is.
John Koetsier, a senior contributor at Forbes Magazine says that, “platforms like TikTok — including Instagram, Snapchat and Facebook — have adopted the same principles that have made gambling addictive.” So not only is TikTok releasing immediate dopamine responses, but almost every other social media app is too.
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So, to put it all together, we use social media as a distraction from our boring, day-to-day lives. We stay up late at night scrolling across our feeds, which causes us to lose sleep, which in return affects the way we function the next day. When we’re sitting at a meeting, or during one of our boring Zoom classes, we tend to open up new tabs to look at the news that Prince Phillip died and disregard the class we’re supposed to be paying attention to.
We are in constant search of dopamine, and the Internet makes it easy for us to get so distracted.