Against my wish, I managed to amass 30k followers on Twitter. Some of these people had notifications turned on for my posts which meant immediately I made a post, they'd be there to interact with it. I also had a small group of people who I interacted with on the timeline, often through comments and quotes and retweets and likes.

Considering I spent several hours a day on this app, I was interacting with hundreds of people per day, on the timeline and in the DMs.

I was both overwhelmed and deeply unsatisfied. I felt like I barely had any friends, which I found weird considering I keep up with my Twitter "family" daily.

Turns out I was under-feeding an important chemical in my brain - oxytocin - and it was starting to fight back.

I left Twitter soon after and spent a year building friendships in real life.

So let's talk about Oxytocin.

What is Oxytocin?

Oxytocin is a brain chemical built specifically to connect you to other humans. A lot of early research on it was around mother and child relationships, but we've since seen it in play in romantic relationships, as well as platonic. When you're in love, you get oxytocin boosts. And it is this same oxytocin that helps you remain connected to the one you love whether it's a friend, romantic partner or pet.

There's a lovely piece of [research by psychologist Sala Algoe] (https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0956797617716922) and her colleagues that throws an interesting light on oxytocin. In this 2017 study, the researchers measured oxytocin levels in 129 couples and then watched how each partner interpreted the other's effort to express gratitude. Participants with higher oxytocin consistently gave their partner the benefit of the doubt. The researchers concluded that oxytocin acted like a rose-colored glasses. With high levels of it, we view others lovingly and perceive love positively.

Why Should we Care About This?

Of all the brain chemicals (I believe you may have heard of dopamine, serotonin, and endorphins), oxytocin is arguably the most desirable one to have in healthy supply. When it's satisfied, i.e through meaningful relationships, your brain becomes much calmer. Your confidence increases and you're generally happier. Most importantly, you feel fulfilled.

This is one of the reasons we crave romance as much as some of us do. It is because high levels of oxytocin increase feelings of satisfaction.

What Keeps Oxytocin Levels Low?

[[Dopamine]] is a brain chemical that is easily hijacked. Four hours of doomscrolling on social media and you get an intense spike in dopamine. This is not the case with oxytocin. There is no oxytocin equivalent of doomscrolling that tricks the brain into a fake hit. However, you can disrupt its ability to rise, and most of us unknowingly do this.

Anything that steals your capacity to actually connect with another person will disrupt the rise of oxytocin. A good example? Your phone.

You know when a friend is speaking to you but you have your head buried in your device, only half-listening? Yeah, that's a major disruptor. It does not allow you connect with the person, and so oxytocin levels stay low.

The story I shared at the start of this piece is a good example of social media acting as a disruptor. When you engage with people online, you are offered a version of connection that is real enough to feel like something, but also thin enough to never satisfy your true needs. For a while the social media connections would seem to work until your debt is due and now you have to pay for it.

Researchers and public health officials use alarming terms in their descriptions of loneliness in today's world. Dr. Vivek Murthy, the U.S Surgeon General, for example, [has compared the health impact of loneliness] (https://fortune.com/well/2023/06/15/loneliness-comparable-to-smoking-up-to-15-cigarettes-a-day/) to smoking up to fifteen cigarettes a day. Imagine how much it is costing your body to stare at your phone rather than into the eyes of the person you are conversing with.

What does this mean then?

Make someone else in your life happy every single day.

I write this with Miles Carter playing in the background and as I wrote the sentence above, this line from "If you decide to leave someone" comes up:

"...do not sacrifice your own peace for the happiness of another."

This piece is one I've listened to dozens of times over the years and, in fact, is one of my favourite works of his as it's a call to leave a relationship if you have to. Choose yourself. Love yourself. For a long time, this is the singular view I had on life, and the world adds a little extra to it; choose you, ignore everyone else

This is destroying our minds and bodies.

Loving yourself is one of the greatest things you can do for yourself. I'd argue that it is the most important. However, it should not include the clause to ignore everyone else. One of the most effective ways to improve your mental health is to spend more time focused on someone other than yourself. When you make another person happy, something in you lights up too.

This is also, I think, why collectivist societies tend to run on noticeably higher oxytocin than individualistic ones. When your culture has you caring for and interacting with cousins, grandparents, neighbours, and a wider web of people around you, you get healthy doses of oxytocin everyday. Individualistic cultures do not make room for this. They keep your attention trained on your goals and your image and your next move, which is the kind of environment oxytocin struggles in.

There's a number worth knowing here: [The Dunbar's number.] (https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20191001-dunbars-number-why-we-can-only-maintain-150-relationships) This is the idea that humans are built to thrive in social groups of around 150 people. Now there's a lot to know about this number, for example that Dunbar's research shows that when groups grow beyond 150, they begin to disintegrate, or that this 150 is really made up of layers where the tightest layer is 5 people who you love deeply, and the largest is 1500 people who you can only recognise.

This layering is important so we do not think we need to become best friends with 150 people.[ A 2014 study by Gillian Sandstrom and Elizabeth Dunn] (https://repository.essex.ac.uk/15300/) found that people reported greater happiness and a stronger sense of belonging on days they interacted with more people around them like classmates, acquaintances, the person at the counter e.t.c, as opposed to only interacting with their inner circle.

Not every connection requires depth. Simply giving compliments to a stranger who passes by can make you feel a bit happier.

So where do we go from here?

In Part 2 of this piece, we'll explore specifics on boosting your oxytocin such as making eye contact when you're having a conversation, holding hands when you and your friend are walking, or even giving yourself a hug as we discussed in the [self-compassion piece.] (https://uwam.life/article/girl-give-yourself-grace-pt-1/)

Until then, reflect on how much of your connections are over social media and how much exist in real life. Think about ways you could connect with others in real life.

See you in the next one!