• by Erik Sass , Staff Writer @eriksass1, June 1, 2016

A number of studies have uncovered evidence that social media addiction is a real phenomenon, and some have even found similarities between the brains of drug addicts and heavy social media users. Now, a study from the University of California Los Angeles suggests social media’s effects are similar to something even more dangerous – chocolate.

In the study (published in the journal Psychological Science) researchers at UCLA's Ahmanson-Lovelace Brain Mapping Center told 32 teenagers ages 13-18 that they were going to participate in an experimental online social network similar to Instagram, where they could post photos and other users could react by “liking” them. The researchers then conducted scans of the subjects’ brain activity with an MRI while they used the social network for 12 minutes, looking at 148 photographs including 40 photos that the subjects submitted themselves.

The researchers also fabricated various number of “likes” for different photos, supposedly left by other users, in order to replicate the dynamics of social sharing on sites like Facebook and Instagram.

When subjects saw the number of likes their photos received (or didn’t receive), the researchers observed activity in several areas of the brain, including one called the nucleus accumbens, which is associated with sensory “rewards” like eating chocolate or winning money. Unsurprisingly, subjects were also influenced in their decisions to “like” or not “like” a photo by the number of “likes” it had already received.

One of the study’s authors, Mirella Dapretto, a professor of psychiatry and biobehavioral sciences at UCLA's Semel Institute of Neuroscience and Human Behavior, pointed out that this kind of impressionability, where virtually unknown peers shape opinions and perceptions, could be dangerous: “That opens up the possibility of a child being more influenced by people who may engage in more risk-taking behavior than your child or your child's immediate friends.”