It’s the element of compulsion that a new study published in the journal Psychological Reports: Disability and Trauma reinforces. Researchers asked 20 undergraduate students to fill out a questionnaire that gauged addiction-type symptoms associated with Facebook, including withdrawal, anxiety, and conflict over the site. Then, researchers used brain imaging to study participants’ brains while they looked at a series of computer images, such as Facebook logos and neutral traffic signs, and pressed (or didn't press) a button. The higher participants scored on the questionnaire, the more likely they were to hit the button (sometimes mistakenly) for Facebook when compared to the neutral images.
The Facebook cues were much more potent triggers in people’s brains than the traffic signs, study co-author Ofir Turel, a psychologist at California State University, Fullerton, told Live Science. He added that this compulsive relationship with the site means people are going to respond faster to beeps from their cellphone than to street signs: “That’s the power of Facebook.”