The brain on social media

We, as a society, have actually been undergoing an experiment that nobody signed up for the last decade or so in which we've all

been subject to social media and the internet. [GENTLE UPBEAT MUSIC]

Habits are really helpful for survival, and they're helpful for our mental health, because they help free up our brains to be able to learn other things and to pay attention

to life around us. The problem is when some of those habits fail to serve us-- stress eating, going on social media,

checking our news feed, or any types of habits that our brains form as a way to try to help us work

with something that's unpleasant but, in fact, creates more problems in their wake. And in fact, there's a lot of research showing

that screen time is not helpful for people, whether it's teenagers on social media getting more anxious or people going on social media sites

and feeling like they're missing out or seeing how everybody else's life is perfect and then they feel depressed. Long story short, screen time isn't always beneficial for us.

In fact, the more screen time we have, the more likely we are to run into problems. [AUDIO LOGO]