Before the internet, “going viral” was not something positive much less something people actively sought out. “Going viral” has become a new age epidemic, with people doing whatever they can for their 60 seconds of fame. But what does “going viral” actually mean, and how does it affect our brains and our self-esteem? Today’s GKIS article will break down “going viral” and its effects. For help raising your child to be digitally smart, check out our GKIS Screen Safety Essentials Course. This course includes all GKIS parenting courses, agreements, and supplements, ensuring you are well-equipped to fight off digital injury and keep your child safe from harm.
What does it mean to “go viral”?
Going viral means sharing something via social media that spreads quickly to thousands, even millions of people. The term viral video was first used in 2009 to describe the video “David After Dentist.”[1]
One viral video or post can turn people into internet celebrities overnight and garner thousands of followers, resulting in brand deals and monetized content. Once a video goes viral, there is no limit to the number of people it will reach or even what platform they will see the video on. It is very common to see posts shared from one platform to the next, whether it be a TikTok on Twitter or a Tweet going viral on Instagram.
The number of views to be considered going viral also varies from platform to platform. One hundred thousand views on TikTok is pretty successful, whereas even a couple hundred thousand views on YouTube is a relatively low number.[2]
The number of likes is also an important factor. Many videos have a high number of views but a relatively low number of likes. These videos are not considered to be going viral because they are not well-received by the general public.[2] Engagement drives up the virality of the content through shares and comments that stimulate the algorithm to continue placing that content on people’s feeds.[2] Another important factor in going viral is the immediacy of response, meaning that the views, likes, and comments must be received within a few hours to days rather than over several months or years.[2]
How does “going viral” affect our brains?
When your video, post, or other content “goes viral,” you receive likes, comments, reposts, shares, and bookmarks. These response notifications prompt the reward systems in our brains.[3] Many fast notifications results in dopamine release. To keep that feel-good feeling going, we keep checking, acting in a way similar to gambling addictions.[3]
Algorithms also take advantage of a variable-reward system because they are programmed to recognize when to take advantage of our reward system and desire for dopamine.[3] This often results in a stockpile of notifications that get delayed until a good amount of time since the last check has passed or a large amount of engagement has accumulated.
For a personal insight into going viral, I interviewed a college student who had recently experienced the sensation of going viral. They said, “I recently had a video go viral on TikTok. It was a video of the Indie-Rock band Boygenius and one of their members, singer Phoebe Bridgers, singing a verse from their song ‘Cool About It.’ I had taken the video at a concert I had recently attended and decided to post it on TikTok since I was lucky enough to be pretty close to the stage. Over the next few days after I posted it, it got 118k views, 32k likes, and 500 comments, and was saved by more than 4000 people. Once it started picking up traction, I became obsessed with checking my notifications and seeing all the new comments. I would constantly look to see how many views I was at each hour. I even got a like from a TikTok creator who I really enjoy so that was very exciting for me.”
Although going viral is thrilling, notifications can be harmful when they are overly distracting.[4] To compensate for smartphone interruptions, studies have shown that people often work faster, resulting in more stress, frustration, time pressure, and effort.[4] Research has linked daily notifications and their interruptions to depression, anxiety, and even symptoms associated with ADHD.[5]
Our interview also revealed that the euphoria of going viral is short-lived and needs constant “re-upping.” Our subject elaborated, “Once the video started to die down though, I got annoyed by the notifications. They were distracting because they were so far and few in-between and nothing quite as exciting as the start. I got kinda sad that my viral moment was dying down. It made me want to post another video to see if it would get the same kind of attention.”
What does “going viral” do to our self-esteem?
Studies have shown that social media can be both detrimental to our self-esteem and boost it at the same time, but how does going viral change that?
Social media usage can add stress to daily life and encourage people to constantly evaluate and compare themselves to others.[6] When someone goes viral, they open themselves up to being judged by thousands of people, some of whom can be cruel, feeling emboldened by the veil of anonymity. While many would agree that the likes and views one receives on a viral post boosts their self-esteem and makes one feel good about themselves, it also allows for internet trolls to make their way into the comment section to bait others into an argument or provoke an emotional reaction.[7]
One-in-five internet users that have been victims of harassment online reported that it happened in the comment section of a website.[8] Reading negative comments can lessen confidence, reduce self-esteem, and depending on the severity, can even provoke suicidal thoughts.[9]
Our GKIS interviewee unfortunately also had experience with the negative side of going viral. They reported, “Before my video went super viral, I had posted another video that didn’t get as many views but still got a couple thousand views, a few hundred likes, and a good amount of comments. The video was clips of my girlfriend and me in celebration of our second anniversary. For the most part, the comments were really nice, with people calling us cute and being supportive. But after a little while of it being up, it got to the wrong side of TikTok. As a queer couple, we’re used to people being rude or staring at us, but to get negative comments just hurt more for some reason. This was a few months ago, but I still think about the comments from time to time. It honestly made me want to delete the whole video even though it was just a few comments out of a bunch of nice ones.”
How Parents Can Help
Understand that what you and your child post has the potential to go viral, even if you don’t want it to.
Set the privacy settings on posts to control who gets to see the content you share.
Prevent a digital injury to your child’s self-esteem before it occurs with our GKIS Screen Safety Toolkit for parents of kids of all ages.
To help facilitate difficult conversations about online content and who should see it, try out our free GKIS Connected Family Screen Agreement.
It’s easy to think that only people who make a series of bad choices become addicts. After all, hard work in recovery seems to switch things around for even the most hardcore addict. But brain research is uncovering processes that demonstrate the same areas in the brain for drug addiction are activated when using social media and other addictive behaviors. For some, genetic inheritance makes them particularly susceptible. Psychological research is also showing the environment plays a big role in sustaining addictive behaviors. Further, using an addictive substance can change your brain wiring immediately. With each use, that change becomes even more pronounced. That means that one momentary lapse of decision-making alters the way you experience reward and punishment. That is why experts say addiction is a disease rather than a moral failing. Once bitten, the addictive drug or behavior behaves more like a disease process. Overcoming the symptoms becomes far more difficult than a simple choice. In today’s article find out the brain processes behind addiction to understand how we are all susceptible. Then I explain the importance the environment plays on addictive behaviors and theories from the father of positive psychology, Martin Seligman. After reading the article, you will know the secret inoculation to online addictions…and it’s not what you’d expect.
What is a behavioral addiction?
Behavioral addictions involve behaviors like gambling, video gaming, shopping, exercise, food, and internet and social media use. “Our brains are made to respond to rewards, which then motivates our actions. Rewards are a brilliant solution to ensure we will do behaviors that are indispensable for the individual and the species.”[1]
For our ancestors, finding foods that tasted sweet meant the food was safe to eat and triggered a rewarding, pleasurable feeling. Once rewarded, we encode a pleasant experience to memory. Now the memory is pleasurable even when the food is nowhere around. In our modern on-demand society, we are surrounded by virtual rewards on our screens, including data about the steps we walk, the calories we eat, and the likes on social media.[2]
Dopamine’s role in reward and punishment has helped us survive.
The neurotransmitter, dopamine, is a primary factor behind reward and punishment. This chemical is released in our brains when we encounter an uncomfortable stimulus, like being chased by a bear, or pleasurable stimulus, like finding berries in the wilderness. Once stimulated, we remember that information for future use. Evolutionarily speaking, these actions helped us identify edible foods, select the right partners, and avoid predators.
Dopamine is also involved in other critical functions, including movement, memory, attention, motivation, arousal, and sleep regulation.[3] Not only is dopamine released when we experience pleasure, but neuroscientists have also found that simply anticipating a reward causes dopamine release. In some circumstances, almost getting the reward is even more reinforcing than actually experiencing the reward. For example, we may be rewarded for posting on social media just by anticipating the “likes” we may receive. Another example was recognized by Netflix producers. They discovered that watching a series cliffhangers is just as satisfying to customers as watching the problem being solved during the following episode.[4]
With periodic dopamine stimulation from experiencing reward, anticipating a reward, and remembering reward, the stage is set to develop behavioral addictions.
The conditioned response of dopamine release makes leaving a rewarding task harder to do. So we seek it, keep on doing it, and miss it when we don’t have it.
How does our evolutionary-based brain wiring lead to behavioral addiction?
In a study conducted at the National Institute on Drug Abuse, Dr. Volkow found behavioral and substance addicted individuals showed a reduction in dopamine D2 receptors. These receptors regulate the frontal part of our brain that allows us to exert self-control. With repeated and frequent administrations of dopamine, the brain progressively loses these D2 receptors.[5] With the desensitization due to lost receptors, we experience a “ludic loop,” a kind of hypnotic state that occurs when we are hooked in doing something with no real reward. Being in a ludic loop is like being trapped in an empty state of limbo, which is characteristic of addictive behavior.[6] The first high sets the trap, and from then on you are simply going through the motions unable to get out.
Furthermore, these brain patterns tap into the oldest parts of our reptilian brain as well as the newer cerebral cortex that surrounds it. With addiction highjacking the emotional seat of our brain (the limbic system) and our control center (the prefrontal region), we lock into reward pursuit and avoid actions that are less likely to bring a reward.[7] Our wiring is built to lock us into these patterns based on evolutionary principles.
Our environment also makes a difference.
A classic 1950s experiment that illustrates addiction involves rats pushing a lever for water or water laced with cocaine. Rats will choose water laced with cocaine over all other stimuli, resulting in a dead rat. But in the 1970s, a psychologist named Bruce Alexander noticed that these experiments were always done in empty cages. Nothing in the rat’s environment was meaningful but the drug. He wondered if this was because of the appeal of drug or could it be because of the environment they were in?
He tested his theory by building “rat parks,” where the rats had everything that makes a rat’s life worth living. They were equipped with exercise wheels, colored balls, and other rats to socialize and mate with. Then he set up the two kinds of waters. The researcher found that when the experiment was administered in “rat park”, the rats had stopped preferring the water with the drug in it. He took this outcome as an illustration that a meaningful environment can influence the pursuit of addictive behaviors. “The opposite of addiction is not sobriety, it is a sense of meaning and connection with others.”[8]
The brain hacks baked into screen technology and how they are impacting us.
In the digital age, we have multiple real-life and virtual identities where cookies mean very different things. We are motivated by online rewards just as we are offline. Programmers and developers have found ways to continually bombard us with new types of rewards like “likes” on social media and “kills” in video games. The first time these activities brought us pleasure, a path was forged for compulsive reward-seeking online.
It’s not unhealthy to seek pleasure that has meaning and brings you happiness, the problem is that the resulting addictive behaviors rarely provide us with meaning. The passion fades to a dull pursuit of something less than we felt initially. It’s the classic chasing of that first high.
To reverse that process, some must detox from that behavior and cultivate an environment rich in meaning so we do not return to the addictive cycle. Instead of a sterile room with one lever that delivers digital cocaine, we must invest in a room rich with opportunity for creativity, socialization, good food, exercise, rejuvenating sleep, productivity, and play.
Three Paths to Happiness
Dr. Martin Seligman, the father of Positive Psychology, studies resilience. He believes there are three paths for the pursuit of happiness, the pleasant life, the good life, and the meaningful life. To inoculate oneself from addiction, one must have a good or meaningful life characterized by personal meaning.
The Pleasant Life
Dr. Seligman describes the pleasant life as the pursuit of pleasurable things. This life revolves around the “ludic loops” of social media likes, endless dating, partying, and learning the skills to amplify them. This life is “not very modifiable.” It makes one vulnerable to routine, addictions, and obsession.
Online, people are extrinsically rewarded through the “likes” of other people and “views” they obtained in their profiles, continuing the habit even after knowing they no longer want to.[9] The person becomes unable to reliably predict when the behavior will occur, how long it will go on, and when it will stop. The problem with the life of pleasure is that it’s hedonistic and lacks meaningfulness.
The Good Life
Dr. Seligman describes the good life with having an “engagement to one’s work, where the individual may be so involved in his craft, that time stops for him,” a harmonious passion where the individual works to strive without the need of feeling obligated or forced. [10] There are no positive emotions, instead it is characterized by flow, a concept first identified by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi in 1990.
Flow is a mental state of intense concentration where the individual is incredibly focused on an enjoyable activity. They are, “in the zone.” This idea has been around for thousands of years and was predominate in eastern cultures. Flow is distinct from pleasure because, during flow, you can’t feel anything.
The Meaningful Life
Dr. Seligman explains the meaningful life as when an individual knows their highest strengths and use them to belong to and be of the service to something larger than themselves.[13] This is important because it provides an individual meaning in life through helping others and having a positive effect in the world, something a life of pleasure cannot provide.
We can’t rely on technology to give us meaning.
Technology is great for instant gratification when we need it. It’s not only the screen itself that is so addictive but the content that is accessible on it. We use technology when we have a psychological need when we feel confused about what to do next, or when we feel we have no effect on the world. Adam Atler describes how these are the moments when we’re most prone to developing behavioral addictions. He analogizes technology as being an “adult pacifier. It soothes and calms our minds by delivering small hits of bottomless entertainment and information.”[14] It characterizes a pleasurable life.
Of course, screens and technology are not all bad. They enable us to be connected with our loved ones and offer apps for health, reading, exercise, meditation, the weather, and education. Technology isn’t the source of meaning, rather it is a bridge to the tasks that bring us meaning, the tasks that allow us to develop a skill and have a positive effect on the world.
Are you using tech as a bridge to a meaningful life, or are you still stuck in the pursuit of pleasure?
Thanks to Andrew Weissmann for writing this important GKIS article.
I’m the mom psychologist who will help you GetKidsInternetSafe.
Screen addiction is officially a thing. As a mom and clinical psychologist for over 25 years, I recognized and identified it in 2014 when I founded GetKidsInternetSafe from treating hundreds of families in my private practice. Teaching addiction studies at CSUCI also highlighted the similarities between drugs and screen behaviors for me. Like everybody else, I too was having a hard time chasing my kids off our screens. Honestly, even I was getting lost in my research and on Facebook, losing the ability to chill and read a novel. I started to worry about my family. From there, I wrote my book Screen Time in the Mean Time, offered keynotes and presentations, consulted with tech companies, coached families, built and tested my online courses, and created a weekly blog. And, after all that, the World Health Organization finally confirmed what I’ve been screaming from the rooftops. Big tech creates screen products that are manipulatively designed to trigger the pleasure centers of our brains, and we are, in fact, clinically addicted.
Gaming Addiction
Nearly 60% of parents think their teens are addicted to their mobile devices. In 2018, the World Health Organization (WHO) classified gaming addiction (IGD)as a mental health disorder. In the last twenty years, the tech revolution has affected every aspect of our lives. Studies have shown that, for some subjects, compulsive screen use impacts the reward and pleasure areas of the brain in the same ways that alcohol, drugs, and other behavioral addictions do. Screen addiction treatment centers have been popping up in Asia for the last decade and are starting to be in the United States as well. Do you worry your child may be showing signs of screen addiction?
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“Remember, when Betty Ford first admitted she was an alcoholic, we didn’t have people believing it was actually a problem until she came around and talked about her own problems with it. This is a place for people to go for help, and that we hope will help everyone around them stop taking Internet addiction so lightly.”
Kimberly Young (founder of The Center for Internet Addiction in 1995)
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Who is to blame?
Parents
Of course, we have some accountability for what happens under our roofs. Pester power breaks us down, and we allow too much screen use even though we know better. We need a break in our overtasked, screen-saturated lives. We can’t entertain our rug rats 24-7.
Kids
They are so persistent! They CRAVE screen use and are master manipulators. Children are vulnerable to screen addiction because their brains are not fully developed, particularly in the prefrontal cortex, which is responsible for impulse control and decision-making. Children who suffer from trauma like bullying, divorce, and abuse, as well as from psychological vulnerabilities like ADHD, anxiety and mood disorders, and autism are particularly vulnerable.
Schools
Schools are increasingly adopting curriculums that require screen use and Internet access during classroom and homework time. Without digital literacy, our kids academically falter. If you are reading this as part of your Social Media Readiness Course, then either your parents or your school are doing an awesome job prepping you to avoid addiction issues down the line.
Big Tech
Screens are programmed to addict us. Big tech, like Google, Amazon, and Facebook, are experts in how to keep us coming back for more. Using secret computer algorithms, our online behavior is studied, collected, and aggregated. This data is used to create and deliver content in the ways our brains will effortlessly absorb it. That translates to targeted ads for clicks and money leaving our bank accounts. Big profit indeed.
The Gaming Industry
The gaming industry made 183 billion dollars last year. Multi-level, high-sensory games, like Fortnite, are intentionally programmed for addictive use. Players are rewarded for staying on and punished for getting off. This keeps kids on-screen, vulnerable to hours of autonomic overarousal. That means they burn too much brain fuel and are left fatigued and in mental brown-out.
The Government
Where is the regulation to protect kids? Are civil liberties really that strong that legislators can’t step in to help parents protect their kids against known harm like online pornography? Or is it that research and treatment organizations can’t compete with rich lobbyists who get direct access to our legislators? Did you know that the advertising budget for Budweiser alone exceeds the entire budget for research on alcoholism and all drugs of addiction?
How common is Internet Gaming Addiction?
Recent studies claim that around 1 – 5% of the US population could be classified as Internet game addicts. It is most common among single young males. Male Internet addiction most typically involves video gaming, cyber-pornography, and online gambling. Women are more likely to show addictive use patterns with social media, texting, and online shopping. IGD commonly cooccurs with depression, anxiety, AD/HD, self-harm, obsessive-compulsive disorder, oppositionality, suicidality, and personality disorders.
Other risk factors include living in the city, not living with a biological parent, low parent involvement, parent unemployment, and not having a reliable friend.
Consequences of IGD include skipping school, lower grades, family conflicts, lack of offline sociality, sleep problems, and unresolved developmental problems. These factors, along with emotional problems, often result in the addict lacking the very resources necessary to break out of the addictive cycle.
What do brain studies say?
Brain imaging studies have found brain changes like those seen in subjects with drug addictions. In other words, the more we play video games, the more our brains change and adapt.
Activation pattern changes that result in brain tissue changes are called adaptive neuroplasticity.
More specifically, subjects with video game addiction show a reduction in gray and white brain matter and reduced cortical thickness in various areas of the brain. The more the gamer plays, the more brain changes. Studies have also found evidence of dopamine release and higher activity in the brain’s pleasure center when playing video games. Heavy gamers have significantly more difficulty calming their emotions and making sound decisions than nongamers.
Thank you to CSUCI Intern, Katherine Bryan for contributing to this article. Screen addiction is real and now universally recognized. If you worry you are seeing red flags in your home, remember that screen addiction is preventable!
I’m the mom psychologist who will help you GetKidsInternetSafe.
Thanks to CSUCI intern, Katherine Carroll for researching “going viral” and its effect on the brain and self-esteem.
