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Discovering the Impact of Notifications on Social Network Addiction

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From Data to Models and Back (DataMod 2020)

Abstract

Addiction is a complex phenomenon, coming from environmental, biological, and psychological causes. It is defined as a natural response of the body to external stimuli that become compulsive needs. From the biological point of view, the brain has the central role: many neural circuits and, above all, the Dopamine System, are involved in the addiction process. Over the last decade, social network communication has become an increasingly addictive activity, for which users appear to engage in social media excessively and/or compulsively. In this work, we show that the current online social networks’ notifications system triggers addictive behaviors. We prove our hypothesis simulating the mathematical modeling of the Dopamine System on real interactions among members of a set of 18 Facebook groups. In line with recent psychological studies, we find that the addicted users show a high frequency of social interactions on the platform.

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Correspondence to Lucia Nasti .

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Nasti, L., Michienzi, A., Guidi, B. (2021). Discovering the Impact of Notifications on Social Network Addiction. In: Bowles, J., Broccia, G., Nanni, M. (eds) From Data to Models and Back. DataMod 2020. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 12611. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-70650-0_5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-70650-0_5

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  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-70649-4

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