Dopamine—as I wrote yesterday, it’s the neurotransmitter fuels our pleasure-seeking and plays a part in instigating, motivating, and rewarding desire. It’s the life of the party. But does dopamine play a part in our modern social media obsession?

Social media is a daily distractor, an attention hound, a time-suck. It’s equal parts feast, famine, fear, ego, and political dumpster fire, and the content (at least the non-advertisement content) is created by the people for the people. It’s our method of mass communication, our way to be heard, our method of connecting with people when we’re alone. This centering of our own message, opinion, need, whatever—doesn’t it etch a groove?

The Silicon Valley tech-wizards know what they know, and among the things they know is this: Social media is technological heroin. No matter how much I swear it off, I always end up back on the social-media sauce. Why? When I’m alone, my brain sends sneaky signals: Social media brings connection; social media is the fix.

Humans were created for social connection. It’s that need that drives friendship, marriage, societal harmony. What happens neurologically when we make those social connections? First comes the Oxytocin—whizz-bang. Then comes a new rush of dopamine, fixing the memory of that whizz-bang firmly in place.

The science behind our attachment to social media is certain. We seek connection—even if a virtual, cotton-candy version of the real—and Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, Instagram, even LinkedIn facilitate a kind of connection. (Even now, aren’t you thinking about social media? Even now, can’t you feel the dopamine firing up the striatum, can’t you feel the tug toward virtual connection?) Scientists—even the ones working for the social media giants—now know that social media primes the flow of dopamine in the brain, dragging us to the rewards of this electronic connection. They know every time we update our status, like, or receive a like on our status, every time we reap the rewards of social media, our brains release more dopamine, locking the memory of this virtual connection in place.

But it’s not just the need for connection that drives our habituated desires toward social media. The social media giants also use certain psychological tricks to stimulate the release of more dopamine. What are those tricks? Unpredictability, incomplete satisfaction, and the cues of potential rewards. Consider:

Unpredictability: What is social media if not an unpredictable hodgepodge of family photos, angry political banter, adorable cat memes, and touching parenting videos?

Incomplete Satisfaction: Can 280 characters tell the whole story, convey full conversational nuance, or create complete connection?

Cues of Potential Rewards: Don’t the notifications, the hums, buzzes, and dings of your cell phone drive you back to the social media platforms time and time again?

These features that drive the cycles of desire, of want, of fixation, and each time we reach for our cellphones in an attempt to satisfy the craving, our etch the groove a little deeper by feel-good chemicals, including dopamine: Social media brings the fix.

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A Word About These Posts

Over the next year, I’m creating a series of connected pieces, each of which will build on the previous posts. It’s a sober stream of consciousness that began with my Waking series. Where will it go? You’ll have to follow along to find out. So, if you’re not already signed up to receive my daily emails, you know what to do. (And while you’re here, consider picking up my books, Coming Clean and The Book of Waking Up.)