How Social Media is slowly killing You

The world can be a cruel place. After a hard day’s work, social media might sound like a good place to find shelter from other duties that surround you. That statement cannot be further from the truth because social media gives you a little spike in dopamine levels to make you feel happy, but provides a false sense of comfort in the long run.

The argument isn’t that social media is innately bad. Quite the contrary, social media connected millions of people around the globe and made communication between us much simpler. However, it also alienated us in a way.

While social media can be beneficial in some cases, it can also be detrimental to your mental health.

The most important negative aspects of social media (that is closely linked to our mental health) are its effects on productivity, social life, and the image of ourselves.

1) Productivity and academic performance

In a cross-sectional study published in May 2019, there was a negative and significant relationship between the overall use of social networks and the academic performance of Iranian medical students.

In other words, students who use social media more tend to have worse grades than those who use social media less. One of the reasons why social media has such a negative impact is that it influences our neurological reward circuits.

As usual in my blog, you have to know some basic neuroscience of reward circuits in your brain. 

Simplified neuroscience:

Our brain is a powerful machine that has advanced mechanisms of rewarding us while we do things that are good for us. Every time you eat something, hug someone, or engage in sexual activity, your brain releases different neurotransmitters.

Neurotransmitters are molecules essential for communication between nerve cells or neurons. They are released from one neuron and bind to their receptors on other neurons, thus activating a signal in a certain brain circuit. One of those neurotransmitters is called dopamine. Dopamine is one of the “happy hormones” your brain produces to make you do things that benefit you. 

You need food to survive, hugs are an important part of social bonding, and sexual intercourse is an inevitable action to produce offspring and prolong your gene line and our species. All of those actions release dopamine and make you feel happy and willing to repeat those actions.

Now that you understand what makes you happy, you can imagine that constant dopamine release must not be a good idea.

Drug addiction works in almost the same way. Taking cocaine, for example, causes a massive release of dopamine in your reward neurocircuitry and causes you to feel extremely euphoric, but after some time, your dopamine levels get depleted, and you need more of that drug to feel the same level of happiness. Some drugs cause such a huge amount of dopamine release that ordinary food or even sex cannot match it. In other words, nothing will make you as happy as that dopamine hit after your drug of choice.

But why do we talk about drugs in a blog post about social media?

While popular social media platforms do not cause such a dopamine rush, they too cause a small amount of dopamine to be released and can get you addicted in a relatively short amount of time. Social media addiction is not as severe as, let’s say, methamphetamine addiction, but can be much more severe in individuals prone to addictive behaviors.

Another negative aspect of social media is its effect on our memory and information retention. While various research that “proved” our attention spans are getting shorter is pretty vague and uncertain, you can tell that your studying is much more effective if you leave your smartphone off. One of the reasons why that is true is that your brain loves information and the small amount of dopamine it gets from social media. Your imageless textbook looks boring in comparison. 

2) Social life

Imagine waiting an entire week or a month to finally catch up with your best friend and share everything interesting that happened to you during the week.

When the day finally arrives, you and your friend finally meet and you ecstatically start ranting about everything with passion, but to your disappointment, your friend isn’t listening to you. That focus on your rant suddenly breaks every 5 minutes or so, for your friend to check up on something on social media. Even more disheartening is the fact that you gaze at your friend’s smartphone and realize that he/she is chatting with another person. How sad or lonely you must feel at that moment. Most of us try to hide our emotions by taking out our smartphones and scrolling through something incredibly unimportant. 

You have probably (sadly) experienced something similar to this. Maybe you were the social media-addicted friend after all. However, there is no one to blame on this occasion. As I said in the previous part of this blog post, your brain loves the dopamine it gets, and even individuals with the strongest willpower can succumb to their brain’s desires.

A rich social life is one of the keys to better mental health and a healthier life overall. We are social creatures and cannot live without one another. Evolution made us well-adapted to constant socializing and bonding with fellow humans in order to increase our chances of survival. Evolutionary speaking, those that failed to build strong social connections, whether because of a lack of communication skills or even some mental health problems, were quickly erased from the gene pool long ago in our history. 

"...those that failed to build strong social connections...were quickly erased from the gene pool long ago in our history. "

While social media proves to be a great tool for immensely expanding our social circle, the quality of those social bonds is nowhere near those we acquire in real life. 

An interesting study at the University of Pennsylvania found that high usage of social media is linked to increased feelings of loneliness and isolation. The same study also found that by limiting your social media consumption time, the effects of loneliness and isolation are easily reversible.

3) Image of ourselves

It is no mystery that social media can distort the image we have of ourselves or the world. We all want to be godlike-looking, immensely productive geniuses who accomplish incredible feats and tasks every day. We are human after all. We all like our egos stroked, and the need to feel valued is deeply biological. However, the problem is that without proper self-evaluation, we can easily become dependent on valuation through likes and shares on social media. 

That is the exact reason some people on social media always present themselves in the best light possible. They hide the truth of everyday struggles they go through and, with that, mask the real-life problems that need their immediate attention.

It is no wonder that social media became a sensation overnight: it provides us with a safe blanket from our problems, but only sets up a catastrophe later on. The distorted image we see makes us feel inadequate and insecure with our appearance, intelligence, or life habits, and we desperately try to prove to ourselves and to our friends otherwise.  

Another point that I want to make (concerning our appearance) is that you don’t want to look good all the time. There is no need and is not worth all the hassle. While you have a good chance to attract a potential partner through a photoshopped image, it is genuinely better for you to see that they are attracted to you despite all of your struggles, problems, and inadequacies. 

In a nutshell:

While social media may seem like a comforting escape after a long day, it often provides only a temporary dopamine boost and can harm mental well-being over time. Though it has revolutionized communication, social media also negatively impacts productivity, social life, and self-image.

1. Productivity and Academic Performance

Social media activates the brain's reward system by releasing dopamine, similar to how addictive substances work. This constant stimulation reduces focus and motivation for tasks like studying, making real-life work (like reading a textbook) feel dull. Overuse is linked to lower academic performance, especially in students.

2. Social Life

Despite connecting us globally, social media has hurt the quality of in-person interactions. It distracts from real conversations and moments, weakening our social bonds. We are social beings who evolved through real-life relationships, and studies show heavy social media use increases loneliness and isolation, effects that improve when usage is reduced.

3. Self-Image

Social media promotes unrealistic portrayals of life and appearance, encouraging people to seek validation through likes and shares. This can distort self-worth and create insecurity. Rather than constantly presenting a perfect version of ourselves, it's healthier to embrace authenticity and seek meaningful relationships based on real connection, not digital performance.