We live in a digital era and almost all of us use social media every day. According to a survey done by ME-T across KRI, 91% of people use Snapchat, 85% of them use Instagram and 71% of them use Tiktok. People spend most of their time scrolling through social media, according to the same survey 29.8% of people use Instagram every hour, 54% of them use Snapchat every hour, and Tiktok 31%. As indicated in these data social media has become firmly integrated into people's daily lives. How does it affect our mental health?

Social media has many positive and enjoyable benefits, but it can also lead to mental health problems. Mental health is defined as a state of well-being in which people understand their abilities, solve life problems, work well, and make significant contributions to the lives of their communities. If social media affects mental health, it can adversely affect all aspects of life. Using social media can lead to physical and psychological addiction because it triggers the brain’s reward system to release dopamine, the “feel-good” chemical. Dopamine is a neurotransmitter. It’s the same chemical our brain releases when we do something pleasurable like eating or consuming sugar.

For some users of social media, their brains may increase dopamine when they engage with Tiktok, Snapchat, Instagram, or other social media platforms. When a user gets a like, a retweet, or a notification, the brain receives a flood of dopamine and sends it along reward pathways. It feels beautiful, but it also reinforces our need to satisfy the feeling next time. This cycle of motivation, reward, and reinforcement is a “dopamine loop” that gets users seeking, looking, craving rewards and more. The most used apps now host short videos that cause high levels of addiction among their users which causes addiction with dopamine implicated. The repetitive use becomes less exciting and we end up needing more to give us the same pleasure we experienced with a lesser amount before, which causes long-term harm, it is no longer possible to watch longer videos or read long paragraphs and books or go for walks and other activities that used to release dopamine in our brain. Some people also use social media as a safety behavior to avoid stressful situations which cause a vicious anxiety cycle.

It is important to recognize the negative consequences of social media, and do a digital detox as well as, understand the triggers behind the use of social media.