Social media firms want us addicted to approval. So much for WiFi making us smarter. Facebook and social media are exploiting our evolutionary need for approval. That's one reason the Internet and WiFi aren't making us smarter.

Glenn Harlan Reynolds | Opinion columnist

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A rather profound tweet by a Twitter user called The Stoic Emperor reads:

Almost all Americans own a smartphone or a computer.

Each device contains the library of Alexandria.

The sum total of all world knowledge.

You can learn anything. Why don't you?

Too busy tracking social status.

Too enthralled by imagery your evolution can't resist.

Sadly, this seems about right. Years ago I wrote about how the arrival of pervasive WiFi and smart devices meant that human knowledge was available like never before:

“I'm writing this in a bar right now, and I have most of human knowledge at my fingertips. Okay, it's not really a bar. It's a campus pizza place, albeit one with 27 kinds of beer on tap, a nice patio and — most importantly — a free 802.11b ‘Wi-Fi’ wireless Internet hookup. With that, and Google, there's not much that I can't find out. If I'm curious about the Hephthalite huns or the rocket equation or how much money Fritz Hollings has gotten from the entertainment industry, I can have it in less time than it takes the barmaid to draw me a beer.“

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That was still a novelty back in 2003. Now it’s a commonplace — but people don’t seem to have gotten significantly smarter or better-informed. And social media, designed to exploit our evolutionary weaknesses, probably do play a role.

When humans evolved in small bands of 20 to 100 people, standing within the tribe was vitally important. Your reproductive success, access to resources, and even your children’s future, depended a lot on your popularity.

It’s not surprising, then, that people who experienced a rush of pleasure when they received social validation — a “dopamine hit,” in today’s popular language of neurochemistry — were more likely to survive, leaving a strong evolutionary bias toward people with a desire to receive social approval. (And a fear of social disapproval, which is why speaking in public is one of the greatest phobias.)

Social media companies know this, and take advantage of it. There’s even a company called Dopamine Labs that specializes in making apps more addictive. (And “more addictive” is a fair way of putting it, given that “dopamine hits” in the brain are also a key mechanism for addictions to alcohol, drugs, gambling and the like.) As noted in Adam Alter’s book, Irresistible: The Rise of Addictive Technology and the Business of Keeping Us Hooked, “Technology companies and marketers have teams of engineers and researchers devoted to keeping us engaged. They know how to push our buttons, and how to coax us into using their products for hours, days, and weeks on end.”

The impact seems to have been to decrease people’s attention spans — as humorously noted in a Dilbert cartoon last week — and to focus people more on personalities and status than on facts and substance, something that seems to have also had a negative effect on our politics and society at large.

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Add to this addictive brain-engineering the fact that social media companies are large quasi-monopolies which are themselves involved gathering huge amounts of user data, and in political manipulation, and there’s room for concern. And people are starting to be concerned.

Appearing on Hugh Hewitt’s MSNBC program this weekend, Sen.Chris Coons , D-Del., said: “Most of us use or enjoy or are familiar with Facebook, and social media, Facebook in particular, has been a remarkable tool to connect people around the world and to bring us together as communities. But as the investigation into what happened in the 2016 election has continued, there’s been more and more evidence put forth about ways in which Facebook may well be exploiting our positive views of its capacities, and instead using its business model, which involves hoovering up huge quantities of personally identifying data and selling it to other entities. This now raises, I think, more concerns for Americans." That's why the Senate Judiciary Committee has asked Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg to testify April 10, Coons said.

Regulation is a blunt instrument, and I don’t like it. But if the tech industry is seen as being in the business of addiction, regulation is likely to take place.

Glenn Harlan Reynolds, a University of Tennessee law professor and the author of The New School: How the Information Age Will Save American Education from Itself, is a member of USA TODAY's Board of Contributors. Follow him on Twitter: @instapundit.