Does Instagram Lower your Testosterone?

the bad thing about television is that

everybody you see

on television is doing something better

than what you're doing

if you look at the increase in brain

size leading to the advent of humans

you'll notice that brain size suddenly

started to increase rapidly

around 2 million years ago it's a bit of

a mystery what we exactly needed all

that brain power for

though british anthropologist robin

dunbar proposes that the brain grew so

large

to keep up with the complex social

demands put on the brain

social dynamics are incredibly important

to primates and people of course

if you've ever felt awkward at a party

excited during a date or incredibly

stressed during a business meeting

you'll know that social interactions can

drastically change

the internal state of our bodies

science has found that a 5 to 15 minute

conversation with an unfamiliar woman

can raise a man's testosterone

exercise releases feel-good endorphins

but

exercising in a group releases more of

these endorphins

sports fans get a testosterone rise just

from seeing

their team win and men experience a drop

or rise in testosterone when they

experience some sort of social defeat

or social victory what's interesting is

how status directly affects

testosterone levels studies on rams and

primates

has found that you can understand quite

accurately where each

male ram or monkey falls on the social

status hierarchy

just by comparing their testosterone

levels

higher status means higher testosterone

and yes in humans

it's been found that a man's status

within an organization

correlates with his testosterone for

example a ceo

would have higher testosterone than a

manager

while not everyone likes to admit it we

all keep stock of who we feel is higher

or lower in status compared to ourselves

monkeys are so concerned with status

that they will in fact pay monkey

currency

cherry juice to see pictures of higher

status male

monkeys or attractive female monkeys

now if you've found yourself on

instagram paying your time and attention

to cooler people doing

cooler stuff than you maybe you know how

these monkeys feel

if you think about it it makes sense for

monkeys to be preoccupied with what's

going on with higher status monkeys

if you don't pay attention and overstep

your bounds and anger a high-ranked

monkey

this could provoke an attack so for me

while understanding what's going on with

dan bilzerian or ryan reynolds will not

benefit me in any way

some part of my brain still keeps me

interested in what these high status

people are doing

it seems that instagram is scratching an

itch that is naturally hardwired into

our brains

yet a survey of almost 1500 british

people aged

14 to 24 suggests that of the different

social media platforms

instagram has the most negative effect

on mental health

this got me interested in instagram's

potential effect on testosterone

lately it seems like men are really

interested in optimizing their

testosterone

with good reason higher testosterone is

associated with more muscle

less fat stronger bones and increased

confidence and better mood

there's all kinds of supplements diet

plans and workout plans

that are supposed to increase

testosterone so sure you could eat more

cholesterol and healthy fats

do sprints and leg workouts but i feel

that how

social dynamics affect testosterone is

not as often talked about

testosterone is very responsive to winds

testosterone raises after all kinds of

wins when you win

money win at sports or when at chess

your testosterone will raise

one study even found hockey players

experiencing a 40

rise in testosterone just from watching

a video

of them winning a past game i don't do

it for the fight i freaking hate to

fight

i like to fight in a cage and one

million of people maybe get humiliated

knocked out

i don't like to fight are you nuts i

like to win when you win you're

it's the feeling is unbelievable it's so

good that

it's worth this yeah testosterone has

been shown to raise men's interest in

women

and at the same time testosterone makes

people more comfortable with directly

greeting

and engaging with strangers so

testosterone changes your behavior in

all kinds of ways

it makes you more likely to engage in

so-called dominance challenges

master of the house

ready with the handshake down chorus boy

and if you win these dominance

challenges then

it will raise your testosterone even

further

a common dominance challenge for

primates including humans

is maintaining angry eye contact

so uh steve would do this as well he'd

say so hector

um so you're really you're really close

with your dad huh

gotta hold the gaze don't say anything

people get so uncomfortable

so is his litmus test to determine if

you're a bozo or not unsurprisingly the

very highly socially ranked billionaire

and face of

apple steve jobs exhibited high

testosterone-like behaviors

like a primal staring contest

so what would raise testosterone more

supplements and exercise or beating your

boss in some sort of sales competition

and getting a promotion and a raise

or how much would defeating your

opponent in a physical dominus challenge

and then raising your social rank

increase your testosterone

there's some interesting research on

testosterone and social anxiety social

anxiety could be characterized as a

very drastic form of subordination that

is

you perceive your status to be so low

that you subordinate yourself to most

everyone and new people become scary

so primates and humans like steve jobs

assert dominance by maintaining

angry eye contact until the opponent

averts their gaze

socially anxious people are especially

uncomfortable with eye contact

yet researchers found that giving

socially anxious people testosterone

drastically increases how comfortable

they are

with staring back at an angry face

also women with social anxiety have been

found to have lower testosterone

and other studies found that giving

people testosterone increases these

so-called

dominance behaviors behaviors that are

essentially the opposite

of socially anxious subordination

behaviors

now defeat can be a depressing cycle

literally as this paper points out

maintaining social hierarchies is

generally cyclical

where repeated defeat leads to anxious

behavior

and repeated victory promotes confident

behavior

which would then lead to more social

victories

on the other hand it's easier to lose at

social challenges

if you've already been losing do you

have a job

no you got money no do you have a woman

no you got anything on the horizon

uh no kids who are bullied or victimized

by their peers that is they are

presented with a dominance challenge

and then defeated these kids develop

symptoms of social anxiety

which makes them more likely to be

bullied in the future because they act

more submissive

and submissive kids are more likely to

be bullied

these kids then experience more defeat

perceive themselves as being

lower and lower on the social hierarchy

and they become less comfortable with

new social interactions

they are less confident become more

anxious and have more depressed

mood which are all symptoms of low

testosterone

so this is also why it's very difficult

often when you're trying to treat

someone who's depressed because you

could say there's not much difference

between being depressed

and existing in the biochemical state

that being at the bottom of the

dominance hierarchy would produce

well then the question is are you

depressed or are you

just at the bottom of a dominance

hierarchy that like the

the symptomatology is very very similar

in fact giving depressed men

testosterone in the form of a gel

has been found to have an antidepressant

effect on them

unfortunately low testosterone has all

kinds of other negative effects

including a worsened body composition

that is more fat

and less muscle so the point here

is that experiencing social defeat and

being lower on the social hierarchy

usually means lower testosterone

so here's what i'm wondering does

scrolling through a feed of people

who are more successful richer more

muscular

better looking and doing cooler things

than you make you perceive yourself

as lower in the social hierarchy and

then lower your testosterone

comparing ourselves to others is a

natural tendency for people

and it can have an effect on our

happiness just like a monkey being

pissed when his colleague gets a grape

whereas he only gets a stupid cucumber

this study titled keeping up with the

joneses found that people's satisfaction

with their salaries

is not totally based on just how much

money they're getting

but how much more money or how much less

money

they're getting compared to the people

they know

so then how many people should we be

comparing ourselves to

the other interesting thing about robin

dunbar's research is that his work

calculates that there is a cognitive

limit to the amount of friends

or acquaintances our brains can keep

track of and that limit

is 150 people dunbar gives several

examples of human groups hitting a limit

of between 100

and 200 people for example

looking at the census data of around 20

hunter-gatherer tribes

the mean tribe size was 153 people

the estimated size of english villages

in 1086 according to the dome state book

was around

150. dunbar and a colleague examined the exchange of christmas cards in the uk

and found that the maximum christmas

card network was 153 people

then a 2008 study gathering data from 18

000 brides found that the average number

of wedding guests at a wedding

was 148. naturally we probably can't

help but compare ourselves to those 150

people we know

and then establish mentally where we

rank in the different social hierarchies

these people belong to sure new people

would come and go

but how does it affect us to pick up our

phones and expose ourselves to the lives

of hundreds of people a week

and then have to calculate theirs and

our positions

on the social hierarchy

going back to the study that found that

monkeys would pay cherry juice to see

high-ranked males

they found that when it came to lower

ranked males

those monkeys would not pay at all to

see them

in fact the researchers had to bribe the

monkeys with cherry juice to get them to

even

look at the lower ranked monkeys now

let's be honest

do any of you browse instagram for

accounts of random

non-artistic average looking strangers

with average jobs

we're mostly going to look at instagram

accounts of people who we feel to be

higher status in us

and maybe meme accounts so is spending

your time looking at higher status

people

going to make you feel like you're

higher or lower on the social hierarchy

to my knowledge there's no study looking

at how instagram directly affects your

testosterone

but my point is that we should consider

testosterone to be a positive feedback

loop like spinning a wheel you can do

things that add momentum and spin the

wheel faster

or you can do things that apply the

brakes a little bit

testosterone is cyclical if your

testosterone is higher

your mood should be better and you'll

have more motivation to go to the gym

which helps maintain a healthy body

composition

and exercise as well as having a healthy

body composition

are linked to higher testosterone

in general men with higher testosterone

seem to earn more money

and specifically a study on stock

brokers found that they were more

successful

on the days that their testosterone was

higher money then gives rise to a

perception of success which is a

component of prestige

and higher prestige is associated with

higher testosterone

and as mentioned earlier men with higher

testosterone are more likely to interact

with women they're attracted to

and interacting with women raises men's

testosterone

in short raising testosterone makes it

easier

to do the things that will further raise

testosterone

unfortunately having lower testosterone

will make it easier to be in the

situations

that lower your testosterone further

so i'd say to just keep an eye on how

instagram makes you feel

if you feel no difference between using

instagram and not using it

maybe it doesn't have such a negative

effect on your psyche or your physiology

but let's say you're feeling good

feeling like a winner feeling kind of

like

someone with high testosterone because

of your success at the gym

work or in your social life or at chess

and then you go on instagram

and see someone else who is winning so

much harder than you

at that thing if that makes you feel

less like a winner

and worsens your mood maybe you should

give

instagram a break

now i'm not gonna lie i have it on

instagram so if you'd like to be jealous

of the oysters or

goosefish liver i'm eating or the papers

or books i'm reading

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a study is done on 250 people who claim

they have psychic

abilities a regular deck of cards has an

equal number of red and black

cards the deck is shuffled and each

person predicts the color of the card on

top

then they take a look and see if they're

right this is repeated eight

times in a row one participant gets

all eight predictions correct the

researcher claims that this person

has indeed exhibited psychic abilities

so based on just the way the experiment

is designed

is the researcher's claim a viable

hypothesis

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