Review

The Emerging Neuroscience

of Social Media
Dar Meshi,1,*,z Diana I. Tamir,2,z and Hauke R. Heekeren1
Social media use is a global phenomenon, with almost two billion people Trends
worldwide regularly using these websites. As Internet access around the world Social media use is a global phenom-
increases, so will the number of social media users. Neuroscientists can capi- enon. Neuroscientists are beginning
to capitalize on the ubiquity of social
talize on the ubiquity of social media use to gain novel insights about social media use to gain novel insights about
cognitive processes and the neural systems that support them. This review social cognitive processes.
outlines social motives that drive people to use social media, proposes neural
Social media provide platforms for
systems supporting social media use, and describes approaches neuroscient- users to satisfy fundamental social
ists can use to conduct research with social media. We close by noting impor- drives, such as connecting with others
tant directions and ethical considerations of future research with social media. and managing one's reputation with
others.

Neural systems that support various

The Rise of Social Media Research types of social cognition have been
Social media permeate our society. Facebook, the world's most popular social networking site, established by research with offline
currently has 1.5 billion regular users, or roughly one out of every five humans on the planeti. behaviors. These neural systems
In the United States, 74% of online adults use social networking sites, such as Facebook, should be involved in online social
media use.
Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and Instagramii,iii. This ubiquitous use of social media generates a
massive amount of data. Each day, people send one billion posts to Facebook, tweet 400 million Neuroscientists can take two
messages through Twitter, upload 12 years’ worth of videos to YouTube, and make 300 000 approaches when using social media
in research. They can take advantage
edits to Wikipedia (Box 1).
of similarities between on- and offline
social behaviors, using measures from
Given the pervasiveness of social media use and this abundance of social media data, it is social media as a proxy for offline beha-
unsurprising that social media have spurred an onslaught of scientific inquiry in the past few viors. Alternately, they can capitalize on
differences between the on- and offline
years. Since 1997, the year the term ‘social media’ was coined [1], over 10 000 published
world, investigating behaviors unique
journal articles have used the term. Researchers across fields such as psychology, econom- to the online environment.
ics, marketing, communications, and sociology have begun using social media in their
investigations [2]. Across all fields of inquiry, however, researchers have only just scratched
the surface of harnessing social media for insights into human social cognitive processes. The
field of neuroscience seems to be particularly behind the times, accounting for only seven
of the articles published on this topic [3–9]. This is particularly surprising because social
media may be uniquely suited to support existing social neuroscience endeavors, and
to facilitate new ones.

To encourage research in this domain, here we propose a framework for using social media to
study social cognitive processes and the neural systems that support them. First, we review the 1
Department of Education and
social motives that drive humans to use social media, and propose neural systems associated Psychology, Freie Universität, Berlin,
with social media use. We then describe how researchers can procure and employ social media Germany
2
Department of Psychology, Princeton
data in research. Finally, we conclude by discussing important avenues of future research, as
University, Princeton, NJ, USA
well as privacy and ethical considerations in conducting research with social media data.

Why People Use Social Media *Correspondence:

[email protected] (D. Meshi).
People use social media for two primary reasons: (i) to connect with others; and (ii) to manage the z
These authors contributed equally to
impression they make on others [10]. These motives arose long before Facebook allowed us to this article.

Trends in Cognitive Sciences, December 2015, Vol. 19, No. 12 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2015.09.004 771
© 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
 Box 1. What are Social Media?
Social media come in many forms. Broadly defined, they allow for the formation of online communities by enabling people
to share information, ideas or opinions, messages, and videos [85].

The prototypical form of social media is the social network. As of 2015, there were over 200 different social networks
functioning worldwidevi. Social network platforms are web-based services that allow individuals to: (i) construct a public
or semipublic profile; (ii) build a list of other users with whom they share a connection; and (iii) view their list of connections
and those made by others within the system [86]. Information included on a profile varies by social network, but usually
includes a picture of the user and a user name, as well as information about demographics and personality, such
as gender, dates of birth, education, employment, and interests. Facebook is currently the most widely used online
social network, with 1.5 billion regular usersi,ii. Other social networks focus on specific uses, such as LinkedIn with a
career focus, Twitter with a microblogging focus, and Instagram with a photo-sharing focus.

Other major categories of social media include media sharing, social news, and collaborative content. Media sharing
platforms, such as YouTube and Flickr, provide people with an arena to share media such as videos or pictures. This
category often overlaps with social networks, because media-sharing platforms sometimes allow for profiles, comments,
or feedback on posted content. For example, Instagram has been categorized as both a social network focused on
photo sharing, as well as a media-sharing platform. Social news platforms, such as Reddit and Digg, provide people with
an arena to share and discuss news. Typically, news that receives many positive votes is featured more prominently on
these sites. Finally, collaborative content platforms, such as Wikipedia, provide people with an arena to collectively
contribute to content on a public website. Users can generate, edit, and delete content, but often do not interact as
socially as in other platforms.

‘friend’ co-workers or Instagram allowed us to ‘like’ their posts. Social media merely capitalize
on pre-existing social drives [11].

People are driven to connect with others and manage their reputation, and likely derive
significant adaptive advantages from doing so. Indeed, finding ways to fulfill our need to belong
to a social group may be as important to our survival as fulfilling our basic biological needs, such
as obtaining food and sex [12]. Living as part of an interconnected group enhances reproductive
success by providing access to potential mates, and enhances physical survival by providing
increased safety from potential predators, as well as providing access to the fruits of communal
agriculture and cooperative hunting efforts [13]. Managing one's reputation within a group
enhances survival rates by helping to sustain successful social connections [14–17]. Groups
increase the potential to not only survive, but also thrive [18]; strong social bonds enhance
psychological wellbeing and protect individuals from feelings of loneliness and depression [19].

Social media provide a platform for people to satisfy these fundamental social drives. Specifi-
cally, social media allow us to connect with others and groom our reputation via at least five
key behaviors (Figure 1): (i) users broadcast information (e.g., text, pictures, links, videos, etc.).
Users can share information that is personal (e.g., vacation photos) [20], or they can propagate
information that is not self-referential in nature (e.g., posting an article about top vacation spots);
and (ii) users receive feedback on broadcasted information. For example, a user might have
pictures of a vacation that she would like to share with others. The user uploads pictures to
social media and then other users provide feedback by commenting on the pictures and/or
providing a signal of approval (e.g., a ‘like’ or ‘favorite’, depending on the social media platform).
This reciprocity works in the opposite direction as well: (iii) users observe information broadcast
by others; and (iv) users provide feedback on others’ posts. For example, a user might see
a picture of a friend's vacation, ‘like’ the picture on Facebook, and then comment on how
much fun the vacation looked. Feedback is usually visible to the user's network or, in some
cases, the public. In either case, (v) users engage in social comparison, by contrasting their own
broadcasts and feedback to others’ [21], such as the number of likes received. This social
comparison is not limited to posts and feedback; descriptive information in a user's profile may
also be used for social comparison, such as online social network size, relationship status, and
age, for example.

772 Trends in Cognitive Sciences, December 2015, Vol. 19, No. 12

 Observe

Receive 3 Provide
feedback feedback
2 4

Broadcast Compare

1 5

Figure 1. Five Key Social Media Behaviors. Social media users can: (1) broadcast information; (2) receive feedback on
this information; (3) observe the broadcasts of others; (4) provide feedback on the broadcasts of others; and (5) compare
themselves with others.

With these key behaviors in mind, we can now propose several neural systems involved in social
media use.

Neural Systems Supporting Social Media Use

Social media provide a platform where the modern human can attempt to satisfy basic social
needs via five key behaviors. These behaviors rely primarily on three domains: social cognition
(i.e., mentalizing), self-referential cognition, and social reward processing. The neural systems
supporting these social cognitive processes have been studied extensively in the offline world.
Here, we review each of the neural systems underlying these cognitive processes in turn (Figure 2).

Mentalizing Network
Using social media requires us to think about the mental states and motivations of other users: to
mentalize [11,22]. For example, before and after a social media user broadcasts information, she

PCC
IFG DMPFC VS
TPJ

MPFC
VTA VMPFC
ATP

Figure 2. Proposed Brain Networks Involved in Social Media Use. Extensive neuroimaging research into social
cognition with offline paradigms has revealed several key brain networks that may be involved in social media use. (i) The
mentalizing network (brain regions in blue): dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (DMPFC), temporoparietal junction (TPJ), anterior
temporal lobe (ATL), inferior frontal gyrus (IFG), and the posterior cingulate cortex/precuneus (PCC); (ii) the self-referential
cognition network (brain regions in red): medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC) and PCC; and (iii) the reward network (brain regions
in green): ventromedial prefrontal cortex (VMPFC), ventral striatum (VS), and ventral tegmental area (VTA). Adapted and
reproduced, with permission, from [87,88].

Trends in Cognitive Sciences, December 2015, Vol. 19, No. 12 773

may think about how her audience will respond. When providing feedback on another user's
posts, a user may think about how this specific user may react upon receiving this feedback.
Finally, when viewing information and feedback broadcast by others, a user may think about
the other user's motivations for posting this information.

Neuroimaging studies of offline social behaviors have demonstrated that thinking about others’
thoughts, feelings, and intentions reliably recruits a network of brain regions, including the
dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (DMPFC), bilateral temporoparietal junction (TPJ), anterior tem-
poral lobes (ATL), inferior frontal gyri (IFG), and posterior cingulate cortex/precuneus (PCC)
[23–25]. Recent studies have directly linked activity in these regions to sharing information
[26,27] and receiving other's shared information [28]. These regions, implicated in offline
information sharing and receipt, as well as in mentalizing more broadly, likely also help us to
process the social thoughts and behaviors elicited by social media.

Self-Referential Cognition Network

People use social media to post information about themselves: they share their own current
subjective experience, recent past, or opinions [29]. As such, social media use involves a great
deal of self-referential thought: thinking about oneself may prompt a user to broadcast those
thoughts, and broadcasting one's thoughts may provoke further self-referential thought. Receiv-
ing feedback may induce reflected self-appraisals, and social comparison likewise requires
users to think about their own behavior in relation to other users.

Neuroimaging studies have demonstrated that self-referential thought involves a network of

midline cortical regions, specifically the medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC) and PCC [30]. Recent
studies have also linked activity in the MPFC to the self-referential component of sharing
information about the self (i.e., self-disclosure) [31]. Online social media use that involves
self-referential thought should likewise recruit this network of brain regions involved in thinking
about the self.

Reward Network
Social media provide users with a consistent supply of social rewards, with each and every
suggestion of social connection or reputation enhancement. For example, Facebook users can
receive positive feedback in the form of a ‘like,’ or social connections in the form of a ‘friend’
request. Even minimalistic cues of social success such as these may activate our brain's
reward system, and keep us coming back to Facebook for more.

Social rewards activate a network of brain regions including the ventromedial prefrontal
cortex (VMPFC), ventral striatum, and ventral tegmental area [32,33]. Neuroimaging research
of offline social behaviors has already implicated this network in each of the five key behaviors
outlined above. For example, sharing of information with others activates the VMPFC and
ventral striatum [31], as does receiving positive social feedback (e.g., getting cues that others
understand you [34], agree with you [35–37], like you [38], or think highly of you [5,39,40]).
Providing others with these same social rewards (e.g., giving a ‘like’ on Facebook), may be
akin to other types of prosocial behavior, which also activate the reward system (e.g.,
donating to charity) [41,42]. Reading others’ posts may likewise elicit reward activity,
because receiving information elicits curiosity [43], a feeling associated with activity in the
ventral striatum [44]. Finally, the ventral striatum may underlie social comparison, with
research showing that activity in this region reflects the comparison between one's own
obtained reward and another person's, rather than the absolute level of one's own reward
[45,46]. These regions, implicated in offline information sharing and receipt, giving and
receiving feedback, and reward processing more broadly, likely also process the rewards
endowed by social media.

774 Trends in Cognitive Sciences, December 2015, Vol. 19, No. 12

Other Networks
In using social media, one must attend to stimuli, make decisions, and execute motor move-
ments, amongst countless other behaviors. These implicate other brain systems in social media
use, such as the frontoparietal attention network [47], the executive function network [48], and
the motor system [49], respectively. Nevertheless, here we focus specifically on the cognitive
processes that make social media unique as a platform for human social interaction.

Research into the neural underpinnings of social cognitive processes provides scaffolding for our
understanding of processes involved in social media use. Future neuroscientific research with
social media should shed light on the actual neurocognitive processes involved. To the extent
that online social behaviors mirror those in the offline social world, we can harness this
knowledge to expand extant social cognitive research in the context of new media.

Using Social Media Data in Social Neuroscience Research

Similarities between On- and Offline Behavior
The online social media world often mimics the offline social world. People establish a network of
friends and acquaintances in the real world, and social media users can mirror this network
online. As we have already seen with the five key behaviors, interactions within this online social
network parallel offline social interactions. Neuroscientists can capitalize upon these similarities
by using measures from online social media use as a proxy for real-world social behaviors.

Why should researchers endeavor to use these types of online behavior as a proxy for similar
offline behaviors? Social media metrics provide important advantages over other types of social
behavior metrics. First and foremost, social media data provide externally valid measures of
people's real-world behavior, while they are actually interacting with others. These data are not
collected during experimental sessions, and are thus less susceptible to demand characteristics
[50]. Social media data can bypass self-report, which is notably susceptible to errors in recall
or self-presentation biases. These data are not completely immune to biases; however, they still
reflect actions people have actually taken in the world and, thus, provide meaningful insight into
people's real, rather than hypothetical, social behaviors [51,52]. As such, these data provide
researchers with a tool to assess the real-world implications for any targeted social cognitive
process under investigation. Second, these data can be simpler to procure than offline social
behaviors (Box 2). Real-time, continuous measures of social behavior used to be available only

Box 2. How to Obtain Behavioral Measures from Social Media

There are several ways to obtain metrics of social media behaviors. First, researchers can simply ask participants to self-
report their behavior, answering questions such as, ‘In the past week, on average, how many minutes per day have you
spent on social media’, from the Facebook Intensity Scale [89]. These self-report measures are easy to execute, but do
not always accurately assess actual behavior [90], possibly due to memory limitations and social desirability bias.

Researchers can more directly assess participants’ online behavior by accessing their social media profiles as another
user would and cataloguing visible behaviors. If participants’ behavior is private or restricted to their social network,
researchers can ask participants to add researcher profiles to their network. This approach is more accurate than self-
report. Because it is time consuming, however, this may render it unfeasible for large-scale studies. Furthermore, many
behaviors may not be visible to researchers simply observing the profile of the study participants.

Researchers can obtain a wider range of participants’ accurate social media data by downloading them directly from the
social media platform. This can be accomplished with API. For example, through Facebook's Graph APIvii, researchers
can access user data, such as ‘likes,’ posts, and profile information [82]. On the Facebook platform, study participants
need to give researchers permission to access their data by entering their email address and Facebook password. An API
is also available for the Twitter platformviii, through which researchers can access data such as tweets from specific users,
tweets from all users on a specific topic, connections between users, and so on. Twitter API users have limited access to
historical tweets, and can only access a subset of ongoing tweet activity. Some companies offer broader access to
Twitter (e.g., Topsy). Overall, after an initial time investment to establish data access through the API, researchers can use
direct download methods to obtain a high volume of specific, time-stamped, quantifiable data created on social media.

Trends in Cognitive Sciences, December 2015, Vol. 19, No. 12 775

with labor-intensive experience sampling and diary recording; social media data can be pro-
cured with a few calls to an application programming interface (API). Third, these data are
typically amassed over an extended period of time and, as a result, may be more stable than data
collected in a single laboratory session, which can be highly variable [53]. Thus, these data likely
reflect behavioral traits, rather than the state of the participant during the laboratory session.
Fourth, social media data can be more easily quantifiable than offline social behaviors (e.g.,
number of likes, size or shape of social network). Finally, social media behaviors can be used
in conjunction with parallel real-world behaviors and, thus, serve as an independent source
of convergent data for a behavior of interest.

Social media data open new doors for researchers interested in linking externally valid social
behaviors to brain structure and function. Researchers can draw from content generated in
the world of social media; for example, there are many online behaviors that neuroscientists
can employ as a proxy for offline social behaviors, or personally relevant variables that can be
extracted, including the following: (i) broadcasts: social media users broadcast their life and
receive broadcasts about real-world events through social media. This behavior, assessed as
the quantity and content of a user's posts or profile information, can be used as a proxy
measure of the content of an individual's offline thoughts or disclosures. For example, one
can assess an individual's tendency to self-disclose as the frequency of ‘I’ statements in
posts, or as the ratio of self-referential to non-self-referential, or informational posts [29].
Further, a user's broadcasts can also be analyzed to measure that individual's emotional
states [54]. Comparing user broadcasts can be used to measure social conformity, by
examining attitude changes in broadcasts after exposure to friends’ broadcasts. Finally,
studies can employ these text and image broadcasts as subject-specific, personally relevant
stimuli; (ii) providing positive feedback: this behavior, measured with likes or positive com-
ments, can be used as a surrogate for offline prosocial behavior; (iii) curiosity: this motivational
construct, assessed via the amount of scrolling through news feeds, clicks on content, or
time spent on social media, can be used as a representation of offline curiosity; (iv) personality
traits: these psychological constructs, which can be predicted from a user's digital footprint
on social media [55,56], can be used as a surrogate for survey assessment of personality.
Currently, one's digital footprint has been used to predict only the ‘big five’ traits, but with
time, neuroscientists will have opportunities to assess more and varied personality traits [57];
(v) social network shape: the location of an individual within their social network (e.g., central
hub or isolated outsider) can be ascertained by analyzing their online social group [58], and
this measure can be used as a proxy for their offline social interactions [59]. The type
of connections between two individuals (e.g., close friends versus distant acquaintances)
can be quantified with social network metrics, and employed as subject-specific social
manipulations.

Neuroscientists have only just begun to leverage this approach to gain a deeper understanding
of human social cognition and neural functioning. For example, two studies examined the
relation between online social network size and gray matter density [4,7]. Replicating previous
research with real-world social networks [60], the authors found that individuals with larger online
social networks had larger amygdalae than individuals with smaller social networks. Another
recent study capitalized on the fact that reputation management drives social media use [10] by
examining the relationship between intensity of online social media use and neural processing
of offline gains in reputation [5]. Results showed that the response of the nucleus accumbens to
reputation enhancement predicted participants’ intensity of social media use. These findings
corroborate the importance of these structures to the maintenance of social networks and
extend our knowledge of the factors that motivate social behaviors, respectively. More impor-
tantly, they establish the viability of using metrics generated by social media use for the study
of social neurocognitive processes.

776 Trends in Cognitive Sciences, December 2015, Vol. 19, No. 12

Despite their advantages, social media data are not without their limitations. First, not all people
use social media; only participants who are self-selected users of social media can provide this
type of data. Second, people are highly aware of how they present themselves to the online
world. As such, these data may be subject to self-presentation biases, similar to those found in
typical laboratory experiments or self-report measures [50]. Finally, although we have thus far
seen that online behaviors mirror those seen offline, this assumption does not always hold true
[61]. Even if we see parallels between on- and offline behavior and the neurocognitive processes
that support that behavior, researchers should be wary that the parallel is not endless.

Differences between On- and Offline Social Environments

Social media provide researchers with more accurate, larger-scale, and convergent measures to
parallel offline social measures and ongoing social neuroscience studies. These social media
measures bolster our ability to reliably and efficiently answer existing questions. Can we also use
social media to answer new questions about our social minds as well? In short, yes. Despite the
parallels outlined above, and the wishes of some users, social media is not the real world. Social
media place users in an environment that differs in important ways from the natural world [61];
each social media platform provides another unique environment within which to interact (Box 3).
Novel social environments can elicit different social behaviors from users, providing researchers
with numerous unique opportunities to tap into these ongoing, naturalistic ‘experiments’ on
human social behavior. Therefore, researchers should be aware of the novelty of the social
media environment to both be wary of and take advantage of this type of data. Here, we describe
several of these on- and offline environmental differences.

To begin with, when people communicate face to face, they must abide by social norms [62]. For
example, people take turns in normal conversations, allowing everyone a chance to speak
in similar doses and waiting one's turn to reciprocate. By contrast, contact on social media is
often unidirectional, rather than reciprocal. That is, online users have limitless opportunities
for one-sided conversation, taking turn after turn for themselves.

Box 3. Social Media Environments

Social media sites vary in the type of environment they afford users [61]. Small differences in environment across websites
can cause large differences in how users interact with those sites and, as a consequence, other users. When using
social media in research, it is important to be aware of features specific to the environment. We propose six features
that may impact the ways users interact:
(i) User Identity (known, semi-anonymous, anonymous): Known users must reveal their real world identity on social
media; semi-anonymous users can be traced back to a known identity, but accounts are not required to contain
personally identifiable information; anonymous users cannot be identified from their account.
(ii) Information format (text, image): information can be shared linguistically, with text, or visually, with images, such as
pictures and/or videos.
(iii) Text length (long-form, short-form): long-form text is not limited in length; short-form text must be shared within
a limited space or format.
(iv) Network connections (personal versus public): social networks can connect individuals who know each other in real
life or they can connect anonymous members of the public. When users broadcast information, it may remain within
just their personal network, or it may appear to a wider audience, respectively. Some social media provide options
for restricting broadcasts within a user's network even further.
(v) Spatial distance (local versus global): most social networking sites give a global reach to users; some social
networking sites keep communication within a more limited, local spatial scale.
(vi) Temporal scale (momentary versus permanent):some social media sites retain the momentary nature of our social
interactions, but most social media sites allow us to store interactions in more enduring format, which we can refer
back to over time. Some social media platforms allow users to delete content, though this data is still retained offline.

In real-world, face-to-face communication, people generally know the person they are speaking to, or can visually identify
the person. People communicate verbally, to friends or members of the public, with no restrictions on length of
discussion. This communication is restricted to a local environment and is usually not recorded. Online social behaviors
vary widely with regard to these environmental features (Table I). Researchers can use these features to assess both
how representative social media data might be of offline social behavior and how environmental factors constrain
or enable human social behaviors.

Trends in Cognitive Sciences, December 2015, Vol. 19, No. 12 777

Table I. Features of Social Media Environmentsa
Environment User Identity Information Text Network Spatial Temporal
Format Length Connections Distance Scale

Real world Known Verbal Long Personal, public Local Momentary

(face to face)

Facebook Known Text, images Long Personal Global Enduring

Google+ Known Text, images Long Personal Global Enduring

Instagram Semi-anonymous Images N/A Personal, public Global Enduring

Twitter Semi-anonymous Text Short Personal, public Global Enduring

Vine Semi-anonymous Images N/A Personal, public Global Enduring

YouTube Semi-anonymous Images N/A Public Global Enduring

Quora Anonymous Text Long Public Global Enduring

Reddit Anonymous Text, images Long Public Global Enduring

Snapchat Known Images N/A Personal Global Enduring

Tumblr Anonymous Images N/A Personal, public Global Enduring

Yik Yak Anonymous Text Short Public Local Enduring

Ripple Semi-anonymous Text, images Short Public Local, global Enduring

Blogs Semi-anonymous Text, images Long Public Global Enduring

LinkedIn Known Text, images Short Public Global Enduring

Wikipedia Anonymous Text, images Long Public Global Enduring

a
This table contains several social media platforms and the environmental features that determine how users interact on the
sites. We list only primary functions for ease of description and to highlight potential avenues for researchers. N/A, not
applicable.

Social media also enable people to interact with others separated by immense spatial, temporal,
and social distance [61,63]. More so than with telegraphs, telephones, and same-day mail
services, we are becoming less and less constrained by spatial or social proximity; people can
talk with a close friend or neighbor next door just as easily as they can have anonymous
conversations with strangers on the other side of the world. Online contact is also more likely to
be socially transient: in the real world, we may only minimally interact with a store clerk, but the
likelihood that we will see that person again is high. By contrast, on social media, we may interact
with someone only once and not know if or when we will interact with that person again. Online
interactions are often also temporally intransient, recorded in databases in perpetuity, whereas
face-to-face interactions often go unrecorded. Finally, online social interactions are often
temporally extended, allowing for breaks in communication. Online, a person does not have
to respond to anything right away; they can wait a minute, an hour, a day, or much longer, and
still be in line with online social norms. Face-to-face communication does not afford this luxury;
during face-to-face conversation, a person who waits in silence for even one minute would be
considered socially awkward.

No longer constrained by spatial, social, and temporal distance, social media allows people to
interact with audiences that are essentially limitless in size. We can just as easily share
information with hundreds of Facebook friends, or Twitter followers, from the comfort of our
own smartphone, as we can chat face-to-face with our nearest friends, one or two at a time. At
the same time, because of the distance and current limitations of technology, people are likely to
miss out on a rich array of social cues that define close interactions: seeing microexpressions,
feeling physical contact, hearing subtleties of intonations [63,64]. Social media may allow for
communication that can be more far-reaching and impactful than ever before, but it also

778 Trends in Cognitive Sciences, December 2015, Vol. 19, No. 12

deprives us of the rich, multimodal social information that we are used to with face-to-face Outstanding Questions
contact. Which real-world social behaviors and
cognitive factors have parallels in social
media? Neuroscience researchers
Given these differences, social media can elicit behaviors that significantly diverge from those have already capitalized on two: social
elicited in face-to-face interactions. For example, by releasing us from the norm of reciprocity, network and reputation management
social media may allow our desire to self-disclose to run wild. During face-to-face discourse, [4,5,7,9]. Which others can be used
to ask questions about the brain and
people spend approximately 30% of conversations sharing information about themselves [65];
behavior?
online, where people have limitless opportunities to share information, self-disclosure skyrockets
to comprise 80% of our online posts [29]. Further, politeness norms dictate that we should Which social behaviors are unique to
behave cordially to one another in face-to-face interactions. By contrast, the social distance social media? When online behaviors
deviate from offline behaviors, what
provided by certain social media platforms, such as YouTube and Twitter, can result in the
does that tell us about the roots of
repeated violation of these norms [66,67]. By releasing people from some of the environmental our social cognitive processes or
constraints that usually shape their behavior, social media provide a wellspring of opportunity to their susceptibility to environmental
understand the roots of our social behaviors, and the extent to which they will be influenced by influence?

different environmental factors. Neuroscientists can capitalize on these natural variations in

What are the consequences of social
online environments by collecting behavioral data and relating them to brain structure or function media use? How does both moderate
to ask new questions about the roots of our social brain and how it adapts in new environments. and excessive use of social media
impact wellbeing or social connec-
tions? How are these changes medi-
Concluding Remarks ated by brain structure and function?
Neuroscience research with social media is still in its infancy, and there is great potential for future
scientific discovery (see Outstanding Questions). One important domain for prospective Are there ways to harness social media
research will be to investigate the effects of regular social media use on our neural and behavioral to investigate or treat psychiatric dis-
orders? Do social media provide an
functioning. The sheer number of people using social media is enormous, and continues to accessible communication platform
increase, with some people spending several hours on social media each day [68] i. How does for individuals in remote areas where
this routine affect us? This question is especially relevant for children and adolescents, who access to medical practitioners is lim-
ited [83]? Does social media help
make up a significant portion of social media consumers, and may be particularly susceptible to
connect individuals with disorders
environmental influences during their development [69] iv,v. As time spent on social media eats characterized by impairments in social
more and more into the time we used to spend face to face with real people [70], it will be functioning, such as autism spectrum
important to know what changes, if any, social media induces in users’ functioning. Although disorder [84] and social anxiety, or
does social media only further isolate
social media can elicit positive consequences [71–73], exploring the effects of social media on
these individuals from potential real-
the brain is especially relevant considering that social media use can develop into a behavioral world social communities?
addiction [6,74,75], and can contribute to poor academic performance [76,77], job loss [78], and
declines in wellbeing [79,80]. Understanding the global effects of social media use, both over When individuals act differently on- and
offline, which actions better reflect their
development and into adulthood, will be an important avenue for future research.
‘true’ self? As social media use takes
up more and more of people's time, will
Before undertaking research with social media, however, researchers should take note of the actions elicited by online environ-
potential privacy and ethical concerns regarding these data [81,82]. For example, obtaining ments become the norm?

consent from one participant may allow researchers to download data created by other users Do interactions on social media provide
who have not provided consent to their data (see discussion of the API in Box 2). If a consenting individuals with a meaningful source of
participant posts a picture on Facebook and a friend comments on it, researchers may be able social connection, or do they merely
to download the identity of the friend and the content of the comment, potentially breaching the provide surface cues of social connec-
tion without the same long-term, sub-
friend's privacy. A good rule of thumb in this circumstance is to adhere to the privacy and ethical stantive benefits we derive from face-
guidelines developed for offline psychological research with human subjects when proceeding to-face interaction? Is social media use
with social media data collection [81]. For a full review of these issues, see [81,82]. adaptive or maladaptive?

Neuroscience research has only just begun to employ social media for garnering insights about
humanity's social prowess and the neural systems that support it. These abundant new social
media data allow researchers to ask new questions about human sociality, and to get new
answers to old questions (see Outstanding Questions). If the same key neural systems engaged
by the offline social world are also engaged by the online social world, the online social world
provides a promising environment within which to study social behaviors. Occasions where the
online social world diverges from the real world also hold immense promise. To capture the

Trends in Cognitive Sciences, December 2015, Vol. 19, No. 12 779

causal relations between the balanced elements that underlie human social cognition, it is
informative to see how perturbations in individual elements perturb the functioning of the larger
system. Which perturbations in our social environment take the breaks off our social drives?
Which perturbations impede our ability to treat others with respect, or impede our ability to
benefit from interactions with others? What can these perturbations in downstream behavior tell
us about the neural systems supporting our social interactions?

Social media provide researchers with a powerful new tool. We hope to encourage researchers
to harness these social media data for insight into our sociality, as well as the neural processes
supporting our social motives and behaviors, and build on the small handful of current endeavors
in this domain.

Acknowledgments
We would like to thank Brent Hughes, Emma Templeton, and Adrian Ward for comments on previous versions of this
manuscript. Funding was provided by the German Research Foundation (DFG) to H.R.H.

Resources
i
http://newsroom.fb.com/company-info/
ii
www.pewinternet.org/2015/01/09/social-media-update-2014/
iii
www.pewinternet.org/fact-sheets/social-networking-fact-sheet/
iv
www.pewinternet.org/fact-sheets/teens-fact-sheet/
v
www.pewinternet.org/2015/04/09/teens-social-media-technology-2015/
vi
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_social_networking_websites
vii
https://developers.facebook.com/docs/graph-api
viii
https://dev.twitter.com/rest/public

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