Social media drains our brains and impacts our decision making

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I'm joined for this episode by Kate Kilpatrick, editor at The Conversation in the US. Hi, Kate. Thanks for coming on the show.

Hi, Amanda. It's great to be on the show. You recently worked on a story in which you explored the impact of social media.

And you specifically looked at how scrolling through social media can add a lot of mental load to our brain and make us vulnerable to making bad decisions.

what drew you to this topic have you had any personal experience like

this yourself I unfortunately have um

I was spending a lot of time on YouTube at night

so I was scrolling through a lot of videos you know went lights out

before falling asleep and most of these videos were shopping related so it was you know the fall trends you need to buy or the best viral products on Amazon.

And yeah, I found myself at night making these purchases for products like a viral product for a foot scrub that, you know, makes your feet feel like baby soft again.

And I would use it once and never use it again.

So I just I just found that I was sort of in this habit of buying these inexpensive products, but products that I really didn't need.

That really resonates with me. I remember some of the impasse purchases I've made, and I probably haven't ever used them ever again.

Now, you've been working with an academic, Matthew Pittman, who's been researching this phenomenon.

Can you tell me about him? Yeah, so Matthew Pittman is an assistant professor of advertising at the University of Tennessee in the United States.

And he focuses on these sort of newish social media environments, so Instagram, TikTok, etc.

And how these platforms have so many different types of content.

We're looking at photos, videos, comments, likes, and how that is a lot of information for our brain to process.

And Matthew uses the concept called cognitive load. Can you explain what's meant by that term? Sure.

So cognitive load is the amount of information our brain can handle in any particular moment.

So the idea when it comes to learning is that if somebody is learning something new, there's only so much information they can take in at a particular time.

And so what Matthew's studies show is sort of similarly when people are scrolling through social media and they're being bombarded by all this type of information,

their brain just gets sort of frazzled and that leaves them vulnerable to buying things that they don't need and maybe they don't even want.

Thanks so much for explaining that. And thank you for coming on to the show, Kate. Thanks for having me, man.

I called up Matthew and spoke to him. I was browsing social media like all of us do, and I found myself seeing the same ads over and over for these ridiculous products.

And I was like, why am I seeing ads for custom Lego sets or a mani pack, which is a fanny pack meant to look like a hairy man's beer belly?

And then I realized the reason I was seeing the ads is because I was purchasing these products.

And my wife and I had many conversations about why did you think you needed this item?

So eventually I decided to investigate what was it about social media use in itself maybe that was priming me to be a little more susceptible to persuasive messages and unnecessary advertising.

Matthew set out to study what researchers in the field of psychology refer to as cognitive load.

Cognitive load is just the idea that our brain is a computer, and just like all computers, it has limited processing capability.

So if you're trying to have a Zoom call and watch a movie and download a game, all at the same time, it's going to tax those limited resources.

Our brain has limited resources, and it can also be taxed if we try to do too many things at once.

But Matthew says the extent to which information puts a strain on our cognitive load isn't always the same.

That's because the way we are able to process information changes throughout the day as we become more and more exposed to stimuli from our surroundings.

So maybe when you first wake up in the morning, you're not tired yet, you're not stressed, hopefully, yet first thing in the morning.

When you see an ad for a mani pack, you think, that's dumb. I don't need that. And you move on.

You scroll past it. However, later in the day, when you are thinking about many simultaneous things, what you're having for dinner, what time am I going to go home?