How Social Media Affects Our Brain?

Social media tools have become an essential part of our everyday lives. It’s inevitable that our over-dependence on social media is going to change the way we think and the way our brains functions. Twitter’s short message of 140 characters has certainly changed the way we send and receive information. The average attention span of people in the present Internet and social media age is 5 second long. Ten years down the line, it was 12 minutes or more than that.

We don’t exercise our memory power as much these days. Forget about remembering your friend’s birthday, you can always rely on Facebook to remind you about Birthdays and other important events. But, social media is not all that bad. It can also have positive impact on us and our lives. Research has shown that social media interactions can stimulate the production of ‘Oxytocin’, the hormone that generates the feeling of trust and empathy, and is often released during face-to-face interactions with close friends. Our body’s stress level also drops when we are interacting with people over social media.