我们沉迷社交媒体，该如何“戒断”？

青春期大脑与社交媒体

青春期是大脑发育格外敏感的时期。神经科学家Eva Telzer说，大脑对社交线索、归属感、奖赏和同伴都极为敏感。她与同事在2024年发表的一项研究中，用两年时间追踪103名处于青春期门槛上的六、七年级学生，每次随访评估其类成瘾性的社交媒体使用，并让他们在扫描仪中完成模拟社交惩罚或奖赏的任务。材料只呈现了研究设计，未给出结果，因此不能据此判断使用方式如何改变大脑。

从“戒断”转向减少伤害

十二步康复项目免费易得，对许多人来说是唯一选项。但治疗药物与行为成瘾的医生和治疗师正逐步从强调“清醒”转向渐进改善与减少伤害。新墨西哥大学研究行为成瘾的Joshua Grubbs认为，完全戒断对很多人并不现实；对性、技术这类行为成瘾，执着于戒断反而可能造成固着和羞耻循环。

像超加工食品一样的社交需求

密歇根大学研究并治疗食物成瘾的Ashley Gearhardt提出类比：社交媒体满足我们对社交的基本需求，正如超加工食品满足对食物的需求。它看起来像生存所需的东西——社交归属或热量——却被拆解重组为追求最大消费与生产者利润的产品。她还指出，意志力最需要的时刻恰恰最难抵抗：别饿着去超市，也别在孤独时刷手机。

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Adolescence is an exquisitely sensitive time in the brain’s development. “The brain is so sensitive to social cues, to the sense of belonging, to rewards, to peers,” says neuroscientist Eva Telzer, who co-directs a tech and teen development center at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. In the past few years she and her colleagues have gotten a close look at how problematic social media use shapes the developing brain. For a 2024 study, she and her colleagues spent two years following 103 sixth and seventh graders on the cusp of puberty. They assessed students’ addictionlike social media use at each check-in, then scanned their brains while they completed a task that simulates receiving a social punishment or reward.

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Twelve-step recovery programs are free and accessible, making them a good (and often the only) option for many people. But doctors and therapists who treat drug and behavioral addictions have been steadily shifting away from sobriety to emphasize gradual progress and a reduction of harm instead. “I don’t think abstinence is a realistic goal for a lot of people,” says Joshua Grubbs, who studies behavioral addictions at the University of New Mexico. He notes that, especially when it comes to behavioral addictions such as those to sex or technology, focusing on sobriety can cause fixation and a cycle of shame.

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Ashley Gearhardt, who studies and treats food addiction at the University of Michigan, points out that social media fulfills our base need for socialization in the same way that ultraprocessed products fulfill our need for food. “It looks like something we need to survive, like social affiliation or calories,” Gearhardt says. But it has been deconstructed and reassembled into something optimized for maximum consumption and the producer’s profit, she says. It’s also hardest to resist in the times we need that willpower the most—don’t go to the grocery store while hungry, and don’t scroll while lonely.