Neuroscience of TikTok Brain Damage. Ban it? transcript

yeah we need to talk about Tick Tock we all know Tick Tock is addictive but why and I'm sorry I'm not satisfied with some vague reference to dopamine loads of stuff gives you a dopamine hit but doesn't explain the addiction and the negative mental health associated with Tick Tock I mean look at this research study on Tick Tock use disorder showing that students with higher Tick Tock addictions had higher anxiety higher depression and worse memories and there's this study showing that stopping Social Media use for just one week reduced anxiety reduce depression and increased well-being there are actual scientific papers where people use tick tock whilst their brains were scanned and I've read them and I'm going to tell you about them because they contain really important information as I record and upload this it's Mental Health Awareness Week in the US and the UK has one every May these promotes starting conversation Nations about mental health and the things in our daily life that can affect her it's really important to raise public and professional awareness of these issues so there's better help for people suffering with that in mind what happens to your brain on tick tock [Laughter] let's get into it okay the first interesting paper to know about is this one published in March 2022 and it actually explains what Tick Tock does to your brain in a really understandable way resting state functional connectivity analysis using the medial prefrontal cortex reveals a significant connection with the anterior medial thalamic nucleus ventral striatum and the ventral touchmental area yeah I didn't get it the first time either let me explain the researchers got some mice and inserted tiny wires into their brains next they put a lever in front of the mice and would wait for them to press it when the mice pressed the lever they got a reward of a nice juicy electrical signal sent down the wire into their brain causing pleasure the mice got really really addicted to pressing that lever when the wires were put into two specific parts of their brain apart over here at the front of the brain called the medial prefrontal cortex and another part of the brain over here called the anterior medial thalamic nucleus don't worry about the names just know that the wires stimulating these parts of the brain made the mice highly addicted to pressing that lever getting that sweet sweet stimulation which shows that these parts of the brain are really really important in driving addiction okay great now you're thinking mice why is addiction what's this got to do with Tick Tock okay so after all of the stuff with the mice the researchers brought in the human folk they put the participants into an MRI brain scanner and took functional images of the activity of their brains whilst they watched Tick Tock videos and here's the punch line which parts of the human brain were activated whilst they watched Tick Tock videos you guessed it the medial prefrontal cortex and the anterior medial thalamic nucleus do you get this it's like Tick Tock literally stimulates your brain in the same way as having wires implanted into the addiction centers of your brain remember it is a mouse brain being compared to a human brain though such comparisons are drawn across the world of Neuroscience okay now we can talk about this dopamine situation the dopamine hit is a thing and it actually relates to what we've just discussed in your brain you have cells called neurons that send signals across this Gap called a synapse the signals are sent by tiny molecules called neurotransmitters one type of these neurotransmitters is called dopamine when dopamine arrives at the next neuron it causes a signal to be sent forward in your brain you have loads of these neurons and dopamine though sometimes you get a dopamine hit where there's suddenly extra dopamine in the synapse causing additional signals to be created it's this increasing signal which which is how the famous dopamine hits can affect Us increasing positivity of mood and motivation these two areas that we were just discussing the medial prefrontal cortex and the anterior medial thalamic nucleus when they're stimulated they activate dopamine-releasing neurons MRI Tick-Tock brain studies have taught us something else quite amazing about something called brain networks a brain network is a common group of areas in your brain that always fire together to perform the same task so anything which requires focused attention activates a few different areas of the brain which we call the dorsal attention Network any coordinated movement activates a group of brain areas that we call the Sensory motor Network another very common network is called the default mode Network the default mode network is a group of brain regions that all fire together when the person is awake but at rest for my neuro nerds out there the default mode Network brain regions are the medial prefrontal cortex where have we heard that before the posterior cingulate cortex angular gyrus and the temporal pole your default mode network shows reduced activity when you perform problem-solving tasks and is most active when you're not focused on the outside world like when your mind goes wandering or you're daydreaming okay great again you're thinking brain Networks where's The Tick Tock hat so a bunch more human folk were brought in by a different study group put into an MRI scanner and watch firstly random Tick Tock videos then prefer Tick Tock videos directly from their own tiktok account feed when participants viewed their preferred Tick Tock videos versus random Tick Tock videos there was higher activation and connectivity of the default mode Network this shows that Tick Tock actually puts your brain into a state of Switched Off a weakness it literally activates the same networks in your brain as when you're mind wandering or daydreaming switching off your brain is pleasurable which is likely to be another Factor driving the addiction but the average user opens Tick Tock 19 times a day children are spending 75 minutes a day on Tick Tock this means that users addicts are activating their default mode Network switching off their brain with an insanely high frequency every day foreign this is bad this finding would also explain why there's decreased memory associated with higher tick tocking switching on your default mode Network switching off your brain every day with such high frequency will have consequences on your ability to concentrate and learn Tick Tock is kind of the perfect thing to promote addiction firstly Tick Tock has limited decision points Tick Tock opens immediately to playing a video and if you don't like it you just swipe your thumb up don't like the next one swipe again the only decision is whether to swipe your thumb up oh I don't know not having to decide anything is nice and relaxing and makes it mentally easy to continue engage with the thing you're doing tying in nicely with activation of the default mode Network secondly tiktok provides you with the potential of being thoroughly entertained within the next 10 to 30 seconds most things that we do in life like working relationships dating exercise they have the potential for long-term rewards but why invest in long-term rewards when you can just take your phone out of your pocket and start being rewarded immediately with some pretty entertaining content the neuroscientist Andrew huberman makes an amazing but a scary point about this on Chris Williamson's modern wisdom podcast saying that quote if we were to look at ourselves through the lens of an experiment like we would an animal experiment we would think that animal is sick if you saw a dog in the corner endlessly digging for a bone you would think that's sad that's using Tick Tock looking for real rewards that inevitably don't exist on that platform it's like a sick dog in the corner just digging all day for a bone that doesn't exist I feel reluctantly compelled to admit that Tick Tock does have some seriously entertaining content and some great educational videos there are also loads of mental health professionals using tiktok to share really good information and advice to help those people who need it but this just feels a little bit like mixing some medicine in with the poison because remember Tech talk doesn't care about improving people's well-being it cares about holding your attention if that happens to be videos from informed professionals speaking about mental health fine if that happens to be idiots sharing bad misinformation fine whether you get better or get worse or stay the same Tick Tock doesn't care as long as they can package up hours of your attention and sell it to advertisers they're happy I haven't even mentioned the disgusting and dangerous trends that just get to live in tick tock's misinformation Echo chamber people squirting melanin up their nose for nasal spray tans advice to pierce your tongue by placing little tiny magnet balls on either side of it the slap a teacher challenge encouraging students to assault their education stuff on camera and the Blackout Challenge encouraging people children to hold their breath until they pass out on camera a trend that's actually resulted in multiple deaths Tick Tock does attempt to take down these videos though their approaches clearly insufficient or else these things wouldn't have become viral Trends and yes I agree with you YouTube shorts and Instagram reels are basically the same thing you'll notice that I don't have any YouTube shorts on my account and I don't plan on making any I actually wish that YouTube had the option to remove being sewn YouTube sorts because they are dangerously addictive and I do enjoy them a little too much if you found this video interesting please consider sharing it with friends and family who you think maybe use tick tock a little bit too much and please consider subscribing as it will really help me to grow the channel so that I can make more videos like this one a bit quicker anyways thank you so much for watching and please check out the link in the description for advice on how to reduce Tick Tock usage and I'll also put some links in there on Mental Health aware tennis week so you can learn more about that too if you want to please let me know if you have any questions and I'll see you in the next one yeah I definitely can't make a tick tock account now it's kind of a shame would have been good for growth