Social media use driven by search for reward, akin to animals seeking food – Science Codex

Our use of social media, specifically our efforts to maximize “likes,” follows a pattern of “reward learning,” concludes a new study by an international team of scientists. Its findings, which appear in the journal Nature Communications, reveal parallels with the behavior of animals, such as rats, in seeking food rewards.
“These results establish that social media engagement follows basic, cross-species principles of reward learning,” explains David Amodio, a professor at New York University and…

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