What social media does to your brain.

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Hello friends of this great community; When was the last time you read a good post and it suddenly motivated you, you know that post that turns you on inside, that makes you think, "Tomorrow I start to change, or tomorrow I start in the gym or tomorrow I give up junk food, or tomorrow I read that book, tomorrow I study, I change, I improve, and then the next day comes, the first alarm goes off, you turn it off, the second goes off, you turn it off, the third goes off, because yes, I know that you set at least three and this time you sit down in bed half asleep, without energy, still with a cloudy mind and before doing anything you open Instagram, you look at stories and images, you open WhatsApp, you answer some messages shortly after you think that 5 minutes have passed, when in reality you look closely at the time and an hour has already passed and there with that feeling of silent failure you say to yourself, "Well, next Monday starts."

Well, the good news and the bad news is that we have all been through this, all of us, and yes, this behavior can also be changed, it is good news because it has a solution and it is bad news because it requires effort, a lot of effort, but I tell you something and it is that it is completely worth it.

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Let's do a quick test, for each point below, write down a check if you do it daily, I need you to concentrate and be honest:

One, you take your cell phone to the bathroom.

Two, you consume more than one thing at a time, for example, you are watching YouTube and at the same time you are on your cell phone.

Three, you can only eat something if you are watching something, that is, a series, a video, a podcast.

Four, your mobile usage time exceeds 4 hours a day, you can check it in the settings right now.

Five. When you are bored, you look for immediate stimuli, music, food, cigarettes, movies, video games.

Six. You grab the phone and unlock it without intention, just out of pure inertia.

Well, if you checked one or more points you have a problem, and you probably know of several other horrible habits that I haven't even mentioned here, there are many triggers that lead us to harmful habits, but the most common is our absolute inability to tolerate idleness or boredom.

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And this is no coincidence, today we have an absurd ease of accessing exciting stimuli at all times, unlike before when to change the environment you had to get up, go out to another room, look for another activity, right, on the other hand, not today, today you can be sitting on the couch and change context 50 times in less than an hour, so, that constant bombardment chemically alters our brain, in less than 60 minutes we have already gone from seeing interesting things to seeing what is happening on the planet, to seeing what happens with the king and of course, all of this affects, destabilizes your entire internal chemical structure.

So, there are several problems here, first, the main one is dopamine. And perhaps you have heard many people talk about dopamine, but I am going to explain it to you in a simple, brief, objective, understandable way, because it is important that we understand today in the world we live in how dopamine works. Dopamine is basically a neurotransmitter, it is a chemical substance produced by neurons to send biological signals, it basically acts as a messenger that carries information from one cell to another.

The main message that dopamine carries is motivation, your brain releases dopamine every time you achieve something that it interprets as good, useful or correct and this has allowed us to evolve, it is an evolutionary process designed so that we maintain beneficial behaviors, that is why we say that dopamine is related to doing things, to acting, so, if you observe the neural activity of someone under the influence of cocaine, for example, you will see a massive release of dopamine, and that is what is called hit.

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In terms of artificial intelligence, we could compare it to a reinforcement learning system, the brain rewards actions that it considers correct and thus trains itself to repeat them, in other words, dopamine is your brain's way of teaching itself which path to follow, this works in two main forms, the release of dopamine, tonic and phasic; Tonic release is the basal level, it is the dopamine that constantly circulates in our body, it is responsible for always keeping us functioning, getting out of bed, getting dressed, washing ourselves, eating, all of that is not that euphoria, it keeps us alive and keeps us operational, however, phasic release is what releases the pleasurable stimulus, a movie, eating something delicious, playing video games, winning, receiving a message that excites us, all of that is the peak dopamine, it is the one that rises above from the basal level.

For example, you want to go to the gym, but you don't feel like it, you have a coffee or a shot of I don't know what, you put on your favorite music, suddenly all of that gives you motivation, it's an impulse that comes and gives you a peak of dopamine, now, here comes a detail that almost no one explains to you and that is that after each peak there is always a fall and the higher the peak, the deeper the fall actually is, that fall below your basal level is called a crash, it is at the moment in which the Dopamine drops more than normal and takes much longer to stabilize and this happens because dopamine is not infinite, it has a limited reserve and takes much longer to regenerate than other substances.

So every time you do something pleasurable, like looking at your cell phone, you are spending a little bit of your deposit, let's put it like this with fictitious numbers to make it simple, imagine that your minimum dopamine level must be 100 and that you have a reserve of 1000, you grab your phone, you go on TikTok, those funny, fast, intense, exciting videos and in just a few minutes your dopamine has suddenly risen, releasing almost to the maximum.

The problem with that is that this type of content gives you an enormous amount of pleasure in a very short time, without any type of effort, that is why it is so addictive as well, unlike a healthy activity such as training, such as studying, working on a project, where the peak comes in a much more gradual way and requires a greater or more conscious effort.

So, when we are on TikTok, for example, going back to the example from before, there comes a point where we no longer even know why we are swiping, right, we are simply continuing as if by inertia, and as I said, after a sharp rise comes a fall. It is also sudden and that drop falls below your basal level, which is why, after a long time spent hooked on those quick stimuli, that feeling of sadness appears.

It's a strange feeling, of emptiness, of lack of motivation, of regret, of extreme laziness, of apathy and suddenly, you don't feel like working, you don't feel like doing anything, you don't feel like studying, training, you don't feel like anything that requires mental energy, so, it's not that you're lazy, it's not that you don't have discipline, it's that biologically you have burned your dopamine reserve on instant stimuli and your brain, your brain has run out of gas for what really matters.

Thanks for stopping by my blog, I hope you enjoyed my content. If you have any questions, concerns, concerns or suggestions let me know in the comments section.

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May it be very good!

The images were created with Artificial Intelligence at https://creator.nightcafe.studio/

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