{"id":76089,"date":"2025-03-05T00:00:05","date_gmt":"2025-03-05T05:00:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/world.edu\/?p=76089"},"modified":"2025-03-05T00:00:05","modified_gmt":"2025-03-05T05:00:05","slug":"how-our-bodies-react-when-we-use-social-media-and-when-we-stop","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/world.edu\/how-our-bodies-react-when-we-use-social-media-and-when-we-stop\/","title":{"rendered":"How our bodies react when we use social media \u2013 and when we stop"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/p>\n

The typical adult in the UK spends nearly two hours on social media<\/a>\u00a0per day. And for younger users, this can easily be\u00a0up to five hours<\/a>. The likes of Instagram or TikTok seem to draw us into their ever-changing feeds and it\u2019s difficult to tear ourselves away from these platforms.<\/p>\n

Now our\u00a0latest study<\/a>\u00a0shows that even our body reflects a state of being glued to the screen when we are on social media.<\/p>\n

We asked 54 young adults to browse their Instagram on their phone for 15 minutes as they would normally do in their daily life. However, in our study we had attached electrodes to their chest and fingers that allowed us to record their heart rate and \u201cskin conductance\u201d, which is an indicator of sweating. Psychologists can use these physiological markers to infer subtle mental states and emotions. We also added a control condition where our participants read a news article on their phone, just before they logged onto Instagram.<\/p>\n

What we found was that, relative to the news reading condition, scrolling away on Instagram led to a marked slowing of participants\u2019 heart rate while, at the same time, increasing their sweating response.<\/p>\n

From\u00a0other research<\/a>\u00a0we know that such a pattern of bodily responses shows that someone\u2019s attention is fully absorbed by a highly significant or emotional stimulus in their environment \u2013 it\u2019s a state of simultaneous excitement and deep immersion into something very meaningful to us.<\/p>\n

Importantly, from the control condition we knew that it was not just being on the phone or reading that caused this bodily response. So there seems to be something special about social media that can easily engross us.<\/p>\n

The most intriguing effect in our study happened when we interrupted participants at the end of their Instagram stint and asked them to go back to reading another news article. Rather than snapping out of the excitement and returning to a calmer state, participants\u2019 sweating response increased further, while heart rate also increased rather than slowed down further.<\/p>\n

Is it addiction?<\/strong><\/h4>\n

What was going on? What helped us interpret these effects were participants\u2019 ratings of their emotions. We collected these before their social media bout and at the time we asked them to log off.<\/p>\n

Participants reported being stressed and anxious when they had to disconnect from their feed. They even reported having social media cravings at that moment. So it looked like the physiological response that we observed when participants had to log off reflected another form of arousal \u2013 but this time it was more negative and stress-related.<\/p>\n

Such bodily and psychological stress responses also occur when people with a substance addiction go through withdrawal during abstinence or after quitting \u201ccold turkey\u201d. So were these signs that we observed \u201cwithdrawal\u201d from Instagram?<\/p>\n

The answer to this question is not straightforward. However, our study may give us some clues. After the experiment, we asked all participants to fill in a questionnaire assessing symptoms of \u201csocial media addiction\u201d.<\/p>\n

While this concept\u00a0is controversial<\/a>\u00a0and currently not recognised as a mental health disorder, the questionnaire told us something about how social media use can negatively affect someone\u2019s daily life. This can even include their work or school results, or lead to conflict with their partners.<\/p>\n

Notably, we did not see any heart rate and sweating differences between participants who scored high or low on these addiction measures. That means, that all our participants showed a pattern of excited immersion during use and stress-related arousal when use was interrupted.<\/p>\n

We don\u2019t think that this finding means that we are all addicted to social media though. Instead, we believe that social media offers very powerful rewards. And some of its features may indeed have an addictive dimension, such as the personalised short-video streams that trap us in an endless loop of entertaining content.<\/p>\n

Critically however,\u00a0our previous study<\/a>\u00a0shows that it is primarily the social aspect of social media that drives most people to use it so intensively. This also means that \u2013 in contrast to drugs \u2013 social media taps into\u00a0basic human needs<\/a>: we all want to belong and to be liked.<\/p>\n

So if we recognise the existence of \u201csocial media addiction\u201d, we might also need to recognise a \u201cfriendship addiction<\/a>\u201d. We should therefore exert caution with the term addiction in the context of social media \u2013 the risk is that normal behaviour could become \u201cpathologised<\/a>\u201d and lead to stigma.<\/p>\n

And, as\u00a0our previous research<\/a>\u00a0indicates, we may be just fine abstaining or cutting down from social media for a while without experiencing dramatic changes to our wellbeing (either positive or negative). The reason for this is that in contrast to drugs, we can satisfy our needs through other means \u2013 for instance, by talking to people.<\/p>\n

Author Bio:<\/strong> Niklas Ihssen is Associate Professor, Department of Psychology at Durham University<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The typical adult in the UK spends nearly two hours on social media\u00a0per day. And for younger users, this can easily be\u00a0up to five hours. The likes of Instagram or TikTok seem to draw us into their ever-changing feeds and it\u2019s difficult to tear ourselves away from these platforms. Now our\u00a0latest study\u00a0shows that even our […]\n… learn more→<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[95],"tags":[1507],"coauthors":[11733],"class_list":["post-76089","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-lifestyle","tag-social-media"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nHow our bodies react when we use social media \u2013 and when we stop - World leading higher education information and services<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/world.edu\/how-our-bodies-react-when-we-use-social-media-and-when-we-stop\/\" class=\"yoast-seo-meta-tag\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" class=\"yoast-seo-meta-tag\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" class=\"yoast-seo-meta-tag\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"How our bodies react when we use social media \u2013 and when we stop - World leading higher education information and services\" class=\"yoast-seo-meta-tag\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The typical adult in the UK spends nearly two hours on social media\u00a0per day. 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