Brilio.net/en - Back in the day, the habit was sex, drugs and rocknroll. But todays teenagers have a different sort of addiction, and its not something they can easily get on the train tracks late at night (unless they have a solid flash on their iPhones.)
Likes. Those pesky little manifestations of our peers approval. We are all too familiar with them. Its the likes that keep us awake late at night after we post a picture on Instagram or constantly checking our Facebooks on our birthdays to see who wished us well. The popularity contest has now gone electrical, and the teenagers of today are at the forefront of the social media game.
But there is now medical evidence that the likes are more than just superficial. In fact, medical research revelaed that the same reward center that is involved in the sensation of pleasure and activated by thoughts of sex, money or ice cream is just as likely to be turned on when teenagers see their photos amassing likes on their social media profiles.
To take that theory to the next level, researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles, conducted a novel experiment in which they recreated a photo-sharing social network similar to Instagram. They then posted a series of pictures with varying degrees of likes, or peer approval, and showed them to a group of 13-18 year olds. The results confirmed what we already believed was true about peer affirmation, with just a little extra science to back it up: when the youngsters viewed images that had a lot of likes, there was greater activity in neural regions of the brain involved with reward processing, social cognition, imitation and attention, compared with neural reactions when the teens looked at photos with fewer likes. This rang true even if the pictures were fairly similar or bland, i.e. a picture of a food or sunglasses.
At any rate, its calming to know that there are actual neurons releasing joyous feelings when we see likes. It almost validates spending 25 minutes searching for that perfectly tinted filter.
(brl/red)
