Digital literacy needs to evolve to include neurochemical literacy, Rennie Naidoo, a research director and professor at Wits believes. He explains how social media can be manipulated to elicit specific engagement and warns that attention and mental clarity are IT leaders’ hottest commodity.
Social media platforms, such as Facebook, X, Instagram and TikTok, have changed the way people connect, share and consume information. But beneath the surface lies something far more insidious, an elaborate game designed to exploit the very neurochemicals that drive our thoughts, actions, and emotions – subliminal stimuli.
In his book, Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now, tech guru and virtual reality pioneer Jaron Lanier argues that social media platforms are addictive by design, engineered to manipulate users’ attention and emotions for profit. His critique centres on the way algorithms relentlessly amplify conflict, outrage and superficial validation to keep users engaged.
Jaron’s argument points directly to how social media exploits fundamental aspects of our neurobiology. What he describes as “behaviour modification empires” is essentially a vast architecture designed to hijack our brain’s reward systems, exploiting the release of dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin and cortisol.
For IT professionals embedded in complex digital ecosystems, understanding the subtle ways these platforms manipulate cognitive behaviour is increasingly non-negotiable as ethical concerns escalate.
Perception as a controlled hallucination
To truly understand how social media impacts our perception, we need to consider the groundbreaking work of Anil Seth, a leading neuroscientist and expert in consciousness research.
In Being You: A New Science of Consciousness, Anil explains that our experience of reality is not a direct reflection of the outside world but rather a mental construction built from the brain’s best guesses. Consciousness, he argues, is a kind of “controlled hallucination”, where our brains continually generate predictions about what’s happening and compare them to sensory information.
When social media platforms constantly bombard us with curated information designed to trigger emotional responses, they effectively hijack this process. Instead of constructing reality based on genuine experiences, our brains increasingly rely on artificial feedback loops created by algorithms designed to maximise engagement.
Social media doesn’t just manipulate our thoughts and behaviours, though. It reshapes our perception of reality itself. The result is a distorted mental model where likes, retweets and comments are mistaken for genuine accomplishment, connection and status.
The dopamine trap
Dopamine is the neurochemical responsible for motivation, anticipation and the pursuit of rewards. It’s not the “pleasure chemical”, as many believe; it’s the “seeking chemical”. It’s the thrill of the chase rather than the satisfaction of catching.
Social media platforms exploit this dopamine-driven circuitry through their system of likes, shares, retweets, comments and notifications. Every time you receive positive social feedback, your brain releases a burst of dopamine, which feels good but quickly fades, leaving you craving more.
According to Jaron this endless pursuit of shallow validation is precisely what keeps users hooked. The brain is effectively being trained to seek dopamine hits rather than engage in meaningful activities. This mirrors Seth’s idea of the brain constantly seeking coherence and validation of its predictive models – only here, the validation is artificially constructed.
Consider the case of TikTok, which has emerged as the most efficient dopamine-generating platform in the world. Its design is based on providing an endless scroll of short, captivating videos that target the brain’s craving for novelty and instant gratification.
In advisory sessions with IT professionals and students, I often reference it as the gold standard in dopamine-engineered design. It’s not just entertaining. It is algorithmic sorcery tailored to short-circuit our attention span.
The serotonin illusion
Serotonin is linked to feelings of pride, status and social belonging. When we feel respected, admired, or valued, serotonin enhances our mood and confidence. Social media exploits this mechanism by offering endless opportunities to compare, compete and construct identities that appear worthy of admiration.
On platforms like Instagram and LinkedIn, the pursuit of serotonin manifests in the relentless curation of “profiles”. Users are driven to craft polished, aspirational versions of themselves, receiving momentary boosts of serotonin from likes, comments and followers.
But this is not genuine status or fulfilment, it’s a precarious, fleeting simulation. In Anil’s terms, it’s “the brain’s desperate attempt to stabilise its model of the world”, constantly undermined by the platform’s engineering.
The oxytocin deception
Oxytocin, sometimes called the “love hormone,” is released when we experience trust, empathy, or genuine social connection. The brain, desperate for authentic social bonds, interprets likes, comments and retweets as meaningful social engagement. But social media interactions are often shallow and devoid of true intimacy.
According to Anil, perception is shaped by feedback loops. When the brain experiences simulated connections, it adjusts its model of reality accordingly. Users become trapped in a world of superficial interactions, reinforcing illusions of social bonds that don’t truly exist.
The cortisol storm
If dopamine, serotonin and oxytocin are the enticing carrots, cortisol, the stress hormone, is the stick. Cortisol is released when we perceive threats or social rejection – social media platforms are designed to trigger this response repeatedly. As Jaron argues, the platforms have a vested interest in keeping us hooked on negativity because it is the most effective way to sustain engagement.
X thrives on outrage, for example, encouraging users to seek validation through performative debates and ideological attacks. Facebook’s algorithms favour emotionally charged content. Overwhelmed by cortisol-inducing stimuli, our brains become trapped in cycles of anxiety and stress.
This corresponds to Anil’s insights about how the brain’s predictive machinery can be manipulated through distorted feedback loops, creating realities where hostility and conflict seem omnipresent.
Balance between connection and control
The problem isn’t just that social media is addictive. It’s brilliantly engineered to exploit our brain’s natural drives. By targeting dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin and cortisol, these platforms influence how we think, feel and perceive reality itself, resulting in fragmented attention, diminished clarity and reduced problem-solving capacity.
Yet to dismiss social media as purely harmful would be remiss. These platforms have transformed professional networking, creative expression and knowledge sharing for many IT professionals. LinkedIn, YouTube, TikTok, Reddit, and GitHub have enabled them to connect, learn and collaborate at an unprecedented scale.
The point is not to demonise social media but to understand it for what it is: a highly sophisticated information system built to capitalise on our neurochemical drives. Knowing this, IT professionals can make more deliberate choices about how they interact with these platforms. As Jaron suggests, stepping away from social media can be a powerful act of reclaiming your own mind.
And, reducing social media’s influence may not be about total abandonment but rather about reclaiming cognitive clarity and using technology on your own terms. While Anil’s research shows how easily our perceptions can be shaped by external influences, it also highlights our capacity to reshape our experiences by choosing what we engage with.
Ironically, the most valuable commodity is no longer oil or data, but our undivided attention. Based on our research at Wits on the cognitive impacts of digital technologies, I often remind IT professionals and our students that digital literacy must now evolve to include neurochemical literacy – the ability to recognise when your cognitive architecture is being co-opted for someone else’s agenda.
In a world saturated with digital noise and engineered distraction, reclaiming your mental clarity may be your most meaningful strategic upgrade of all.
