It’s the dopamine hit. You’ve heard this, right? That little neurotransmitter that gets released in your brain when your phone buzzes and a little heart shows up telling you that someone likes something you posted. Or when you hear your notification beep letting you know someone followed you.

Social media has tons of dopamine-generating-potential.

We get it in real life too, when we receive praise or positive feedback. Ask any performer what applause feels like, any athlete what cheering fans feels like, any student what the A feels like.

But there’s a difference. Of course there’s a difference.

Training for a marathon takes more time than posting the perfect picture.

Practicing an instrument to perform well takes years, not two seconds to click “like”.

Writing a paper takes a whole lot longer than tapping out 140 characters.

Which might explain why the sense of satisfaction and happiness from those achievements lasts significantly longer than a “like” does.

That warm and fuzzy feeling, that dopamine hit from social media, wears off pretty quick. And we, being human beings, would very much like to feel good again so back we go.

It’s the need for validation that we all have. The need to be liked. (Yes, we all really do need this). Social media seduces us because it delivers on that need. But it’s a shallow and hollow and never-really-fulfilled delivery, because it doesn’t sustain us long-term.

Long term happiness doesn’t come from short term effort. Never has, never will.

Not only are we seduced, but we’re increasingly addicted to social media, and it’s not just the younger generation either. Most people balk at that statement, but there really is an easy way to figure out if you are: turn it off. Just turn it off. Not for an hour. Not for a day.

Step away from all social media for a week. A full week. One hundred and sixty-eight hours.

If the thought gives you pause, and for a lot of us it does, then perhaps now might be a good time to actually take a pause from social media. It might be a good time to put down the phone and pick up a book, a hobby, an instrument, a craft. Invest in something more long-term than a quick dopamine hit.

Invest in maybe, you?

It might be time.

~xo,
LuAnne