With social media sites being used by one-third of the ____ world, they've clearly had a ____ influence on society. But what about our bodies? Here are five crazy ways that social media and the internet are affecting your brain right now. Can't log off? Surprisingly, five to ten percent of internet users are actually unable to control how much time they spend online. Though it's a psychological addiction ____ a substance addiction, brain scans of these people actually show a similar ____ of regions that those with drug dependence have. Specifically, there's a clear ____ of white matter in the regions that control emotional processing, attention, and decision-making. Because social media provides immediate rewards with very little effort required, your brain begins to rewire itself, making you desire these stimulations, and you begin to ____ more of this neurological excitement after each interaction. Sounds a little like a drug, right? We also see a shift when looking at multitasking. You might think that those who use social media or ____ switch between work and websites are better at multitasking, but studies have found that when comparing heavy media users to others, they perform much worse during task switching tests. Increased multitasking online reduces your brain's ability to ____ interferences, and can even make it harder for your brain to ____. Like when your phone buzzes in the middle of ____ work. Or wait, did it even buzz? Phantom vibration syndrome is a ____ new psychological ____ where you think you felt your phone ____, but it didn't. In one study, 89% of test subjects said they experienced this at least once every two weeks. It would seem that our brains now ____ an itch as an actual vibration from our phone. As crazy as it seems, technology has begun to ____ our nervous system, and our brains are being triggered in a way they never have before in history. Social media also ____ a release of dopamine, the feel-good chemical. Using MRI scans, scientists found that the ____ centers in people's brains are much more active when they're talking about their own views as opposed to listening to others. Not so surprising, we all love talking about ourselves, right? But it turns out that while 30 to 40 percent of face-to-face conversations involve communicating our own experiences, around 80 percent of social media communication is ____. The same part of your brain related to orgasms, motivation, and love are stimulated by your social media use, and ____ when you know you have an audience. But it's not all so self-involved. In fact, studies on relationships have found that partners tend to like each other more if they meet for the first time online, rather than with a face-to-face ____. Whether it's because people are more ____, or perhaps more clear about their future goals, there's a statistical increase in successful partnerships that started online. So while the internet has changed our verbal communication with increased physical ____, perhaps the ones that matter the most ____ even closer.

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