Excerpt from a recent article in the Washington Post:
...the [Facebook] page itself is purely driven by the act of trying to promote the act of seeking, and seeking is all about delivering small surprises, which trigger dopamine, which puts people into this happy, hazy place where they feel comfortable. But ultimately, it's really detrimental. It has the same kind of effect as cocaine and amphetamines.
So, for me, it's almost like Facebook is an optimized dopamine trigger system.
Then later in the article...
Then later in the article...
I open up my Facebook page, and I see this news stream, and I see people I know giving me little surprises that are completely meaningless. I don't really care that "chicken-noodle soup stinks." But somehow it rewards me at some basic neurological level, because it's a new piece of information that's related to someone I know. So it triggers a reward, but it's a completely empty reward.
