Bad decision-making is a trait oftentimes associated with drug addicts and pathological gamblers, but what about people who excessively use social media?
Bad decision-making is a trait oftentimes associated with drug addicts and pathological gamblers, but what about people who excessively use social media? New research from Michigan State University shows a connection between social media use and impaired risky decision-making, which is commonly deficient in substance addiction.
“Around one-third of humans on the planet are using social media, and some of these people are displaying maladaptive, excessive use of these sites,” said Dar Meshi, lead author and assistant professor at MSU. “Our findings will hopefully motivate the field to take social media overuse seriously.”
The findings, published in the Journal of Behavior Addictions, are the first to examine the relationship between social media use and risky decision-making capabilities.
“Decision making is oftentimes compromised in individuals with substance use disorders. They sometimes fail to learn from their mistakes and continue down a path of negative outcomes,” Meshi said. “But no one previously looked at this behavior as it relates to excessive social media users, so we investigated this possible parallel between excessive social media users and substance abusers. While we didn’t test for the cause of poor decision-making, we tested for its correlation with problematic social media use.”
Read more at Michigan State University
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