Plasticity and social media
Is the brain of future generations undergoing remodeling?
A study published on January 3 in the highly reputable Journal of the American Medical Association - Pediatrics has just proven the impact of social media usage on the brain development trajectories of young adolescents.
The conclusion: regularly checking social networks leads to certain changes in the adolescent's brain, particularly in their sensitivity to social rewards and "sanctions."
Not all individuals react in the same way: some quickly develop a form of addiction to likes, leading them to implement strategies on platforms to obtain higher rewards.
Other adolescents will develop behaviors anticipating the upcoming reward or punishment related to posted content. Depending on the individual's developmental stage and the salience of the content, the expectation can be more or less anxiety-inducing or, conversely, motivating.
Adolescents who check their social networks more than fifteen times a day at the age of 12 develop a form of hypersensitivity to feedback or opinions from their peers.
The impact of social networks on neural plasticity and the type of relationship with others that we want to build is a matter of debate.
As Carolina A. Miranda puts it, "On TikTok, you don't follow people, you follow an algorithm. Or, rather, the algorithm follows you." This means that very young individuals could end up trying to construct identities designed to please a tool that rewards them for good performance.
“On TikTok, you don't follow people, you follow an algorithm. Or, rather, the algorithm follows you.”
Carolina A. Miranda
Plasticity, self-performance in social networks, reciprocity: a time bomb for community living? In any case, the schools in the city of Seattle have decided to take legal action against Meta, Google, TikTok, and Snap, accused of creating a mental health crisis. To be continued.
Word of the day: trailerization
Cultural plasticity! We are inundated with content; to stand out, film and series producers invest heavily in trailers to capture people's attention. The evolution of content consumption has led creative industries to change the nature of trailers: fewer voiceovers describing the film, almost writing a film within the film. Since music is at the heart of the marketing strategy for these trailers, popular titles are often used, finely adapted or updated by removing certain instruments or choosing an artist more in line with audience standards.
The film "The Social Network" is considered the first example of trailerization, thanks to a version of Radiohead's "Creep" performed by the Belgian choir Scala and Kolacny Brothers.
This need for familiarity with content and, at the same time, distinctiveness is well known to advertisers—the famous "hook." This also leads to the belief that analyzing past popular culture can increase the chances of an idea exploding on social networks. The dance scene from Wednesday by Jenna Ortega being the latest notable example of this trailerization technique.
Impressive links
Another musical week! Spotify has just launched Playlist in a bottle, a selection of songs that should please you in the future (2024), based on the analysis of listening history on the platform and after answering a few questions. The genius idea: this playlist cannot be listened to before 2024. The relationship to time—and the management of immediacy or, on the contrary, its rarity—is at the heart of experience.
According to Baidu (one of the tech leaders in China, known for its search engine), the number of projects for creating "virtual people" has doubled since 2021. Beijing has even announced a plan to transform municipal employees into virtual characters by 2025. It was also known that 36% of consumers had watched a virtual influencer or digital celebrity in 2022 according to Kantar. The combination of the democratization of uses, the reduction of the costs of creating a virtual character, and the explosion of the need for content in service areas (finance, tourism, etc.) will accelerate this virtualization of conversations, interactions, and exchanges. Considering that the voice command "OK Google" was born in 2016, we see the incredible acceleration of technology.
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