Brain scans used to see if Facebook is addictive

ConclusionThis study draws comparisons between "addiction" to social media and substance addiction, while making it clear there are important differences between the two. The differing consequences of spending too much time on Facebook (which might include too little time working or studying) are less extreme and immediate than the consequences of addiction to hard drugs. The study has some obvious limitations. The results are based on just 20 young people from a US university, which means they may not be applicable to people of different ages, levels of education, or backgrounds. Importantly, none of the students taking part had high scores of addiction, so we don't know whether the brain scan results apply to people with very heavy social media use or dependency.Also, the study does not show that Facebook use caused the increase in brain activity in the ventral striatum. It could be that people who have more activity in the brain's reward system are more likely to become heavy users of Facebook, or it could be that heavy Facebook users develop more activity in this region. Alternatively, it could just be that people recognised the Facebook images more quickly than the road signs – the researchers did not ascertain if any of the participants drove a car or cycled – and that other more commonly seen images would have produced similar results. We'd need much larger, longitudinal studies to find out if there is a link between brain activity in the ventral striatu...
Source: NHS News Feed - Category: Consumer Health News Tags: Mental health Neurology Source Type: news