12 Policy Brief No. 22 Toda Peace Institute/Alliance for Peacebuilding scans illustrate that feedback via social media activates the “reward center” of the brain in a way similar to addictive drugs. (Wolpert 2016) Psychologist Larry Rosen describes: The typical person checks their phone every 15 minutes or less and half of the time they check their phone there is no alert, no notification. It’s coming from inside their head telling them, “Gee, I haven’t check in Facebook in a while…. I wonder if somebody commented on my … post." That then generates cortisol [in the brain], and it starts to make you anxious. And eventually, your goal is to get rid of that anxiety, so you check in. (Anderson Cooper 2017) The colored thumbs up on Facebook offers users a hit of dopamine when someone on their Friend List hits a key. Dopamine, a pleasurable brain chemical, is infamous for its role in creating a sense of pleasure for people with self-destructive addictions to food, sex, and drugs. By offering affirmation through "Likes," social media platforms are creating what many researchers call “affirmation addicts.” This may be particularly harmful for young people, especially young women, whom researchers document have lower levels of self-confidence after interacting on social media. (Teen Safe 2016) Social media gives us the ability to publicly perform affiliations and project identity while inviting affirmation and confirmation of relationships. In his book AntiSocial Media, Siva Vaidhyanathan describes the sadistic origin of social media platforms like Facebook or Instagram in an online game called “Hot or Not.com,” in which people judged and offered their faces to be judged by others, signaling the intense human desire for social feedback. (Vaidhyanathan 2018, 39-50) 20. Emotional Reactions, not Deliberation. Social media’s “race to the brainstem” makes complex thinking more difficult. Democratic deliberation, critical thinking to determine fact from fiction, and creative problem-solving takes place in the frontal cortex, behind the forehead. The frontal cortex is essential to building society, analyzing public problems, and creating solutions and innovations to improve social and political goods. In the midst of conflict and trauma, more primitive and emotion-based neurological systems tend to take over. Ironically, the more chaos and conflict that there is in society, the less able humans are to respond with the part of their brain that might enable them to reduce chaos and violence. (Alliance for Peacebuilding 2016) Opportunities for Social and Political Goods The dawn of social media came with a techno-optimist narrative that new technologies could help individuals and institutions devoted to social and political goods. 21. Connecting with Others to Build Empathy, Tolerance, and Compassion. Social media offers people more opportunities to voice their experiences, ideas, and political preferences. People can connect with each other, combatting social