Why Would You Do That?

People do things that are redundant to their overall well being due to lack of better judgement and understanding due to distraction from environmental and psychological factors.

Sometimes, the act of endlessly doing something sounds challenging and impossible. Think of a time where you wished you did not have the amount of work that you were tasked to do, like homework. You wished to instead do nothing at all and just chill. Ok. Wish granted. You are now doing nothing for hours, staring at a wall, and have no one to talk to. That  would feel impossible. The repetition of an action for too long eventually becomes exhausting, leading to unsatisfactory feelings. It gets boring because you are alone and not motivated by any external factors. However, humans surprise themselves in certain instances as they become attached to actions that do involve external factors, resulting in a pleasing effect on them. If someone was prompted to watch TikTok for 12 hours, they would not break a sweat. Why? What is so fulfilling and mesmerizing about staring at a screen to entertain people so simply?

There’s a bit of Bill Nye Science explanation behind this. And no, it's not that we are getting hypnotized by social media, rather, our brains are feeding off of it. While using social media, which is something that is a pleasurable activity, our brains release this “feel good chemical”, called dopamine, and is a sign to our bodies that we are doing a positive behavior because the release of this chemical makes us feel good. This relaxing feeling is an instant reward, which encourages the behavior. People don’t realize how relaxed they feel while doing things like using social media or substance abuse, and eventually lead to addiction and dependence on these activities because they are mindless and work-free. This addiction becomes a cycle of repeated “bad” behavior, only to feel good short term.