A computational reward learning account of social media engagement

• Published in: Nature communications Vol. 12; no. 1; p. 1311
• Main Authors: Lindström, Björn, Bellander, Martin, Schultner, David T., Chang, Allen, Tobler, Philippe N., Amodio, David M.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London Nature Publishing Group UK 26.02.2021; Nature Publishing Group; Nature Portfolio
• Subjects: 631/477/2811; 706/689/112; 706/689/477/2811; Computer applications; Digital media; Empirical analysis; Female; Human behavior; Humanities and Social Sciences; Humans; Learning; Learning theory; Male; Mathematical models; Medicin och hälsovetenskap; Mimicry; multidisciplinary; Reinforcement; Reinforcement, Psychology; Reward; Reward (psychology); Science; Science (multidisciplinary); Skinner boxes; Social Behavior; Social discrimination learning; Social Media; Social networks
• ISSN: 2041-1723; 2041-1723
• DOI: 10.1038/s41467-020-19607-x

Social media has become a modern arena for human life, with billions of daily users worldwide. The intense popularity of social media is often attributed to a psychological need for social rewards (likes), portraying the online world as a Skinner Box for the modern human. Yet despite such portrayals, empirical evidence for social media engagement as reward-based behavior remains scant. Here, we apply a computational approach to directly test whether reward learning mechanisms contribute to social media behavior. We analyze over one million posts from over 4000 individuals on multiple social media platforms, using computational models based on reinforcement learning theory. Our results consistently show that human behavior on social media conforms qualitatively and quantitatively to the principles of reward learning. Specifically, social media users spaced their posts to maximize the average rate of accrued social rewards, in a manner subject to both the effort cost of posting and the opportunity cost of inaction. Results further reveal meaningful individual difference profiles in social reward learning on social media. Finally, an online experiment ( n  = 176), mimicking key aspects of social media, verifies that social rewards causally influence behavior as posited by our computational account. Together, these findings support a reward learning account of social media engagement and offer new insights into this emergent mode of modern human behavior. Despite the popularity of social media, the psychological processes that drive people to engage in it remain poorly understood. The authors applied a computational modeling approach to data from multiple social media platforms to show that engagement can be explained by mechanisms of reward learning.