Social Media and Your Brain

Do you ever check the clock and wonder how you wasted away hours of your day on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter? Ragan Social Media breaks down what's happened to our brains over the last 14 years with the constant use of social media. Is social media your brain's favorite drug or is it still that morning cup of caffeine? Click the infographic below to visit Ragan.com and learn more.

In 2000, a person's average attention span was 12 seconds.

In 2013, that dwindled down to 8 seconds.

Here's the humbling part: The attention span of a goldfish is 9 seconds.

With this (horrifying) statistic and others, an infographic from TollFreeForwarding.com explains how social media affects our brains. Here are a few insights:

• Tweeting for 10 minutes can raise your oxytocin level (the hormone that reduces anxiety) as much as 13 percent.
• A majority of 18-to-85-year-olds found social media is harder to resist than smoking, drinking, spending money, sleeping and sex.
• Facebook users are on the social network for an average of 81 hours per year.
• People switch between devices an average of 21 times per hour.

Take a look at the infographic and let us know: Do you think social media is good for the brain?