Facebook is a growing global phenomenon and it seems, a petri dish for social psychologists to examine the affect it and other communication technologies are having on human motivation, attention and social interaction.
Facebook Has Built-In Reinforcement Variables That Can Lead to Addiction
Dr. Michael Fenichel, a psychologist who has published a number of online articles about what he calls Facebook Addiction Disorder, (FAD) says it’s difficult to see just how culturally ingrained Facebook has become because everyone is doing it, or at least appears to be.
Facebook Addiction Disorder, or internet addiction disorder, have yet to be included in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), but psychologists have long been studying the impact of social media and other communication technologies.
In his online article about FAD, Fenichel indicates that the dynamics of Facebook present a particularly ripe environment to foster addiction.
Facebook has the “best possible recipe for significant (behavioral) addiction, as it fills a large and "normal" part of so many lives,” he says. “Facebook Addiction Disorder appears to me to have the most ingrained and self-reinforcing of all scenarios, reinforcing through immediacy, acclamation, intimacy, shared experience, shared creativity, and the ability to be the complete and total captain of the ship of one's Facebook home page,” explains Fenichel.
The risk for addiction is the result of a number of factors that surround frequent use of information and communication technologies. For one says Fenichel, social networking has moved from small personal and professional networking worlds (email, texting etc.) to large and constantly streaming public arenas like Twitter and Facebook. This scenario strongly reinforces exhibitionist, voyeuristic, and/or interaction-seeking behavior, often in combination.
Facebook in particular offers users a number of powerful reinforcers: instant messaging, the ability to post pictures and videos, play pop-psychology and pop-culture games and quizzes ("applications"), follow (slightly less closely than Twitter) the every move, thought, idea, decision, feeling, and random thought coming across numerous networks and to maintain a homepage/"wall" for people to see.
So, has frequent Facebook use become a societal problem or has it and other electronic communication habits simply become the new normal for how people now seek information and connect with each other?
Social Media & Facebook Addiction Disorder Becoming More Prevalent
Therapists are in fact, seeing a growing number of clients who admit to being addicted to Facebook, says Paula Pile, a marriage and family therapist interviewed for the online CNN article, "Five Clues You Are Addicted to Facebook," (Cohen, Elizabeth, CNN.com. April 23rd, 2009).
"Last Friday, I had three clients in my office with Facebook problems," said Pile. "It's turned into a compulsion -- a compulsion to dissociate from your real world and go live in the Facebook world," she says.
The litmus test for Facebook addiction is if usage disrupts day to day life such as waking up, getting dressed, using the telephone, or checking e-mail, says Fenichel. When Facebook users ignore family and work obligations, when their online, non-real world becomes more enjoyable than their real life, the behavior has crossed over into an addiction, says Pile.
Yet she is quick to point out that most Facebook users (500 million as of July 2010) are not addicted. Likely Facebook creates what Fenichel refers to as the proverbial “kid in the candy store,” scenario, splitting people into the majority of users who get on the site for fun, and a smaller segment who drench themselves in Facebook compulsively, often at the expense of other activities and interactions in their life.
The constant temptation of applications, games, positive reinforcement and voyeurism of Facebook lures some to a point where they lose impulse control and have trouble breaking away from the constant stream of activation/reinforcement. For others, Facebook is merely an indulgence, like the occasional sweet, something to use only when they're in the mood, not something that becomes and unquenchable craving or compulsive urge.
One of the risks of heavy Facebook use is that it isn't the real world; it 's generally filled with highly selective content, with edited and polished versions of what’s really going in someone’s life.
Joanna Lipari, a clinical psychologist at the University of California interviewed for the CNN article, says she compares Facebook to "The Truman Show," the 1998 Jim Carrey movie about a fabricated world where nothing ever goes wrong. "Facebook is a fun, pleasant, happy, beautiful world. People only present the crème de la crème of their lives on Facebook. And these people want to be your friends! It's very seductive."
Symptoms of Facebook Addiction
So how does someone know if they’re addicted to Facebook? The signs are similar to any compulsion. In her article, Elizabeth Cohen offers five suggestions:
- Losing sleep over Facebook;
- Spending more than an hour a day on Facebook although Pile says it's hard to pinpoint exactly how much is too much time to be spending on social networking;
- Becoming obsessed with old loves;
- Ignoring work in favor of Facebook; and
- The idea of getting off Facebook leaves you in a cold sweat.
Pile created her own test, the "Facebook Compulsion Inventory."
Dopamine and Social Media
Susan Weinschenk, Ph.D., in her 2009 online article, “100 Things You Should Know About People: #8 – Dopamine Makes You Addicted To Seeking Information,” explains that the brain neurotransmitter dopamine is critical to a number of functions including thinking, moving, sleeping, mood, attention, motivation seeking and reward.
Once believed to be the pleasure/reward chemical that evokes enjoyment and what motivates certain desires such as food, sex and drugs, Weinschenk says new research suggests dopamine is actually all about creating “seeking” behavior.
“Dopamine causes us to want, desire, seek out, and search. It increases our general level of arousal and our goal-directed behavior. (From an evolutionary stand-point this is critical. The dopamine seeking system keeps us motivated to move through our world, learn, and survive), “ explains Weinschenk.
The “wanting” system in the body is thought to be driven by opoids, and the "wanting" and dopamine "seeking" systems work together, explains Kent Berridege, author of “What is the role of dopamine in reward: hedonic impact, reward learning, or incentive salience?” (Brain Research Reviews 1998).
So, how does information technology and social media sites like Facebook fire off the dopamine system? Weinschenk explains that they stimulate:
- A need for instant gratification. People can now talk to someone immediately by sending a text or instant message and the person can respond in a few seconds. If someone wants instant information or to see what they’re friends are doing, they can Google, go to Twitter or get on Facebook. Yet the problem is, once the dopamine loop is initiated it becomes hard to stop.
- Anticipation. Brain scans shower higher stimulation and activity when people anticipate a reward than when they actually get one. This means they're more driven by what they might find when they get on Facebook, check their email etc, than the actually information they receive.
- Unpredictability. This is the long studied reward/punishment mechanism involved in intermittent or variable reinforcement schedules. When people check their email, text, Twitter or Facebook messages, they don’t know exactly who is contacting them or what they will receive. This feedback mechanism is largely unpredictable and exactly what stimulates the dopamine system.
- Small pieces of information. The dopamine system is most powerfully stimulated when the information coming in is small enough not to entirely satisfy. A short text or twitter (can only be 140 characters!) is ideal to fire off the dopamine system.
Clifford Nass, a communications professor at Stanford quoted in an online New York Times article about the price of technology, explains how technology factors into human motivation, “Throughout evolutionary history, a big surprise would get everyone’s brain thinking. But we’ve got a large and growing group of people who think the slightest hint that something interesting might be going on is like catnip. They can’t ignore it.”
In addition to the risk of heavy technology use becoming a global addiction, Nass feels it reduces empathy in people by limiting how much they engage with one another, even in the same room. “The way we become more human is by paying attention to each other,” he said. “It shows how much you care.” That empathy, Mr. Nass said, is important to the human condition. “We are at an inflection point,” he said. “A significant fraction of people’s experiences are now fragmented.”
Related reading:
Naturally Elevate Dopamine Levels in the Brain
Facebook and People with Narcissistic Personality Disorder Easily Spotted
The Impact of The Internet on Tolerance for Others
Research Finds Positive Social Aspects of Regular Online Usage
Twitter – Who Tweets and Why
Research Shows Online Users Have More, and More Diverse Contacts
Footnotes:
Cohen , Elizabeth. “Five clues that you are addicted to Facebook.” CNN.com. April 23, 2009.
Fenichel, Michael, Ph.D. “ Facebook Addiction Disorder.” Fenichel.com. May 1, 2009.
Richtel, Matt. “Attached to Technology and Paying a Price.” NYTimes.com. June 6, 2010.
Weinschenk, Susan Ph.D. “100 Things You Should Know About People: #8 – Dopamine Makes You Addicted To Seeking Information.” What Makes Them Click.com. November 7th, 2009.
Laura Owens - Laura Owens has a B.S. in Psychology from Rollins College & U of FL. She is a freelance writer with expertise in motivation & wellness.
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