Hi Hive account@techblogger. Thanks Hive account@thaicryptokitty. Thanks for the heads up on this article.

Ahh yes dopamine. That little substance that is our happy juice. For sure it is an integral part off social media activities and it along with other substances in the body and psychological tricks are some of the things that keep people glued to their smartphones and sometimes unable to move away even when they have important things to do like eat a meal or do some work.

I am familiar with this topic and what Sean Parker said (even though he made billions off of hitting people with dopamine). The truth is that this is not a Facebook issue nor a silicon valley one. Every good marketing exploits our need for dopamine on a regular basis and the positive things that can happen when you get it regularly. Dopamine hitting is also a key part of schools (testing has a dopamine aspect), and your job (projects that you are given and even how most people get promotions rely on dopamine boosting strategies. But with regard to social networking this is certainly an issue.

On the one hand you want people to be interested and the simplest way to do that is to create a reward system. And the best type of reward system is one that does not have to be explained, you just feel it. That describes dopamine perfectly. So it will I think always be at the heart of social networking.

But it does not have to be a bad thing because people can be moved towards positive behaviors that also produce rewards and that is up to the social network to do this.

This is one of the things I discuss about Steemit. They have a great challenge. The majority of people have been lured here by the promise of making lots of cash, but that is simply not possible for 95%+ of the people here. When that becomes evident, the dopamine hit they are experiencing when they write their blogs will cease. And Steemit will have issues. They will before that time I hope create alternative and equally compelling and stimulating reasons for being here. If not they will have serious issues attracting and keeping members or they will be forced into using other dopamine "tricks" to ty and keep people spending their time here.

Just my thoughts. Thanks.