Among the many benefits that social networking brings to us, people include, as such, the growth of their platforms.
As your Instagram followers grow, the brain reacts in specific ways, some pleasant, some slightly dangerous.
Adding followers on Instagram can lead to an increase in dopamine in your brain, says neuropsychologist Dr. Sanam Hafeez. (Dopamine - the chemical associated with pleasure.)
Dr. Hafeez adds that it can be particularly driven by comparative behavior, where you compare the number of your followers with others posting similar content.
How many followers you get is unpredictable, so it adds an "unknown" aspect that makes it more exciting.
Adding followers to social media, however, can produce other feelings as well.
Psychotherapist Elizabeth Beecroft says that if you are inclined to monitor the number of your followers, you can feed anxiety.
A considerable number of followers may mean that you have more eyes watching or viewing your account, which can create symptoms of anxiety about wanting to maintain a "status" or image that you create. You can continue to be somewhat stressed i to continue posting content that people like or engage in, that you like even more.
The pandemic may have affected all of this even worse. Studies in Italy found that locals had used more social media during quarantine and that their anxiety levels had increased.
Important:
Follower numbers, likes, comments, etc. vary and linking self-esteem or happiness to these virtual figures can be dangerous to mental health.
Since a larger number of followers affects dopamine levels, the brain turns this into a behavior from which you have become addicted. If your followers decrease or do not change, the lack of dopamine can make you feel miserable.
Doctors say that "a day without this external 'reinforcement' can lead to depression and feelings of low self-esteem / self-esteem."
Followers on other accounts also have a psychological impact.
As a viewer, one might think that because an individual has a large number of followers, this can make them more credible. This surface gauge can play an important role in the perception of what we see online.
When we see that a person has 1 million followers, he seems to us more reliable, more popular than us. A study published in Child Development in 2018 found that college students were more likely to like posts on Insta that had already received a lot of likes from thousands of followers.
If you find it difficult to stop updating your profile to see the number of followers, or you are anxious to maintain the number you have or to increase it, doctors suggest you withdraw for a while.
Summarized from academic studies prepared by psychologists.
Source: Bustle
