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  • With social media sites being used by one third of the entire world, theyve clearly had a major influence on society.

  • But what about our bodies?

  • Here are 5 crazy ways that social media and the internet are affecting your brain right now!

  • Can't log off? Surprisingly, 5-10% of Internet users are actually unable to control how much time they spend online.

  • Though it’s a psychological addiction as opposed to a substance addiction, brain scans of these people actually show a similar impairment of regions that those with drug dependence have.

  • Specifically, there is a clear degradation of white matter in the regions that control emotional processing, attention and decision making.

  • Because social media provides immediate rewards with very little effort required, your brain begins to rewire itself, making you desire these stimulations.

  • And you begin to crave more of this neurological excitement after each interaction.

  • Sounds a little like a drug, right?

  • We also see a shift when looking at multi-tasking.

  • You might think that those who use social media or constantly switch between work and websites are better at multitasking.

  • But studies have found that when comparing heavy media users to others, they perform much worse during task switching tests.

  • Increased multi-tasking online reduces your brain's ability to filter out interferences, and can even make it harder for your brain to commit information to memory,

  • like when your phone buzzes in the middle of productive work.

  • Or wait...did it even buzz?

  • Phantom Vibration Syndrome is a relatively new psychological phenomenon where you think you felt your phone go off, but it didn’t.

  • In one study, 89% of test subjects said they experienced this at least once every two weeks.

  • It would seem that our brains now perceive an itch as an actual vibration from our phone.

  • As crazy as it seems, technology has begun to rewire our nervous systems, and our brains are being triggered in a way they never have been before in history.

  • Social Media also triggers a release of dopamine, the feel good chemical.

  • Using MRI scans, scientists found that the reward centers in people’s brains are much more active when they are talking about their own views , as opposed to listening to others.

  • Not so surprisingwe all love talking about ourselves, right?

  • But it turns out that while 30-40% of face-to-face conversations involve communicating our own experiences, around 80% of social media communication is self-involved.

  • The same part of your brain related to orgasms, motivation and love are stimulated by your social media use, and even more so when you know you have an audience.

  • Our body is physiologically rewarding us for talking about ourselves online!

  • But it’s not all so self-involved.

  • In fact, studies on relationships have found that partners tend to like each other more if they meet for the first time online rather than with a face-to-face interaction.

  • Whether it’s because people are more anonymous or perhaps more clear about their future goals, there is a statistical increase in successful partnerships that started online.

  • So while the internet has changed our verbal communication with increased physical separation, perhaps the ones that matter the most end up even closer.

  • Speaking of social media, we had you ask us questions on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook,

  • Tumblr, Google+ and every other social platform we could find and did a Q&A Video over on AsapTHOUGHT!

  • So if you like getting some insider info on AsapSCIENCE and behind the scenes, check it out with the link in the description!

  • Got a burning question you want answered? Ask it in the comments or on Facebook and Twitter.

  • We also finally got a PO Box, for all of you amazing science lovers who have requested to send us mail or other stuff over the years.

  • And we’d love to hear from all of you!

  • So feel free to use the address on the screen or in the description box.

  • And subscribe for more weekly science videos!

With social media sites being used by one third of the entire world, theyve clearly had a major influence on society.

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