Chapter 10 Further Reading: Social Rewards and the Approval Economy — Why Likes Feel Like Love

The following works are recommended for readers who want to explore the neuroscience of social reward, the psychology of approval-seeking, and the design and effects of quantified social feedback systems in greater depth. Annotations describe each work's specific relevance and its level of accessibility.

1. Lieberman, Matthew D. Social: Why Our Brains Are Wired to Connect. Crown Publishers, 2013.

The best accessible synthesis of the neuroscience of social cognition and social reward. Lieberman, a UCLA neuroscientist, argues that the human brain's primary evolutionary adaptation was for social life — not tool use, not language alone, but the management of complex social relationships. His account of why social pain and social reward are neurologically primary (not secondary or derived from physical rewards) is essential background for Chapter 10's argument. Readable, well-evidenced, and genuinely illuminating.

2. Eisenberger, Naomi I., Matthew D. Lieberman, and Kipling D. Williams. "Does Rejection Hurt? An fMRI Study of Social Exclusion." Science 302, no. 5643 (2003): 290–292.

The foundational paper demonstrating that social rejection activates the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex — the same region associated with physical pain. This paper is brief, methodologically innovative, and one of the most influential in social neuroscience. Its direct relevance to the "why getting three likes hurts" question makes it essential primary source reading for Chapter 10. Available through most university library databases.

3. Festinger, Leon. "A Theory of Social Comparison Processes." Human Relations 7, no. 2 (1954): 117–140.

The original statement of social comparison theory, published the year before Festinger's famous cognitive dissonance work. The paper is more nuanced than popular summaries suggest: Festinger distinguishes between comparison of abilities (where we prefer to compare with similar others) and comparison of opinions (where we seek consensus), and he addresses the conditions that produce upward versus lateral comparison. Reading the primary source prevents the oversimplifications that circulate in popular accounts of social comparison on social media.

4. Twenge, Jean M. iGen: Why Today's Super-Connected Kids Are Growing Up Less Rebellious, More Tolerant, Less Happy — and Completely Unprepared for Adulthood. Atria Books, 2017.

Twenge's analysis of generational mental health trends and their correlation with smartphone adoption. Using large-scale survey data, she documents the inflection point around 2012 when adolescent depression, loneliness, and anxiety rates began increasing sharply — coinciding with Instagram's adoption by teenagers. Her work is sometimes criticized for overclaiming causal inference from correlational data, and the criticism is partly valid. But the data patterns she documents are real and demand explanation. Essential reading, ideally alongside critiques such as Orben and Przybylski's response papers.

5. Orben, Amy, and Andrew K. Przybylski. "The Association Between Adolescent Well-Being and Digital Technology Use." Nature Human Behaviour 3 (2019): 173–182.

A rigorous methodological critique and reanalysis of the literature on social media and adolescent wellbeing. Orben and Przybylski argue that many prior studies, including some of Twenge's work, have drawn stronger causal conclusions than their correlational methodology supports, and that effect sizes are often comparable to those for other common behaviors (wearing glasses, eating potatoes) treated as unremarkable. This paper is essential for calibrating what the evidence actually supports — and for understanding why the debate about social media harms is genuinely scientifically contested, not simply resolved. Read alongside Twenge for a balanced view.

6. Wells, Georgia, Jeff Horwitz, and Deepa Seetharaman. "Facebook Knows Instagram Is Toxic for Teen Girls, Company Documents Show." The Wall Street Journal, September 14, 2021.

The investigative report that publicly disclosed Meta's internal research on Instagram's effects on teenage girls, including the finding that 32 percent of teenage girls reported Instagram made them feel worse about their bodies when they already felt bad. This article, part of the "Facebook Files" series, is essential primary source reading for understanding the gap between what platforms knew from their own research and what they communicated publicly. Available at wsj.com; portions of the underlying documents are available through the Congressional record.

7. Lewis, Paul. "Our Minds Can Be Hijacked: The Tech Insiders Who Fear a Smartphone Dystopia." The Guardian, September 6, 2017.

The Guardian profile that includes Justin Rosenstein's and Leah Pearlman's accounts of their concerns about the like button they helped build. Also includes accounts from other Silicon Valley insiders who left tech companies specifically because of concerns about behavioral manipulation. An essential document in the history of tech industry self-reflection, and a primary source for the "regret of the builders" section of Case Study 10.1.

8. Valkenburg, Patti M. "Social Media Use and Well-Being: What We Know and What We Need to Know." Current Opinion in Psychology 45 (2022).

A thoughtful synthesis by one of the leading researchers in this area, addressing what is well-established, what is contested, and what research is still needed. Valkenburg has developed a nuanced "differential susceptibility to media effects" model that accounts for individual variation in social media's effects — some users are clearly more affected than others, and understanding who and why is crucial for both research and intervention. Accessible to readers without a psychology background.

9. Fardouly, Jasmine, and Lenny R. Vartanian. "Social Media and Body Image Concerns: Current Research and Future Directions." Current Opinion in Psychology 9 (2016): 1–5.

A systematic review of research on social media and body image, with particular attention to Instagram and photo-sharing platforms. Fardouly and Vartanian document the mechanisms through which social media photo environments produce body image dissatisfaction — primarily through social comparison, exposure to idealized images, and the objectifying dynamics of appearance-focused sharing. Directly relevant to the Chapter 10 discussion of Instagram as a comparison machine and the internal Meta research on body image effects.

10. Meshi, Dar, Cyril Morawetz, and Hauke R. Heekeren. "Nucleus Accumbens Response to Gains in Reputation for the Self Relative to Gains for Others Predicts Social Media Use." Frontiers in Human Neuroscience 7 (2013): 439.

The fMRI study documenting nucleus accumbens responses to social reputation gains in the context of social media use. One of the foundational papers in the neuroscience of social media, it provides empirical evidence for the claim that social media approval activates the brain's primary reward circuitry, not merely secondary social judgment processes. Available open-access through Frontiers.

11. Alter, Adam. Irresistible: The Rise of Addictive Technology and the Business of Keeping Us Hooked. Penguin Press, 2017.

Alter's chapters on social feedback and approval in the context of addictive digital behavior are directly relevant to Chapter 10. His concept of the "social feedback loop" — the cycle of posting, waiting for approval, receiving approval, and being motivated to post again — is a useful framework that bridges behavioral psychology and platform design analysis. He interviews designers, researchers, and heavy users, making the book both research-grounded and humanly compelling.

12. Lanier, Jaron. Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now. Henry Holt and Company, 2018.

A polemical but substantive argument from one of the internet's pioneers (Lanier coined the term "virtual reality" and was a central figure in Silicon Valley's early culture). His argument that social media platforms are specifically designed to exploit negative emotions — including approval anxiety and social comparison — is stated more forcefully than the research supports in its strongest form, but his analysis of how "attention merchants" monetize human behavioral vulnerabilities is sharp and useful. Read alongside more empirical sources for balance.

13. Haidt, Jonathan, and Jean M. Twenge. "This Is Our Chance to Pull Teenagers Out of the Smartphone Trap." The New York Times, July 31, 2021.

Haidt and Twenge's joint op-ed arguing for specific practical interventions in adolescent social media use, including raising the minimum age for social media accounts, delaying smartphone adoption, and creating phone-free school environments. A useful example of how academic researchers translate their findings into policy recommendations. Haidt's more extended argument is developed in his 2024 book The Anxious Generation, which arrived after this chapter's primary research period but is relevant context.

14. Narain, Maya, et al. "Social Feedback and Self-Esteem in Adolescents: A Longitudinal Study." Developmental Psychology 57, no. 4 (2021).

A longitudinal study examining how social feedback received through social media platforms affects self-esteem development in adolescents over time. Longitudinal designs (following the same individuals over months or years) are substantially more informative than cross-sectional studies about whether social media effects are causal. The finding that social media feedback patterns predicted self-esteem trajectories, even after controlling for prior self-esteem, is important evidence for the developmental argument in Chapter 10.

15. Andreassen, Cecilie S., et al. "The Relationship Between Addictive Use of Social Media, Narcissism, and Self-Esteem: Findings from a Large National Survey." Addictive Behaviors 64 (2017): 287–293.

A large-scale survey study from Norway examining the relationship between problematic social media use, self-esteem, and approval-seeking personality characteristics. Andreassen has developed widely-used scales for measuring addictive social media use (the Bergen Social Media Addiction Scale) and her research on the relationship between social approval seeking and platform overuse is directly relevant to the approval economy dynamics in Chapter 10. The finding that low self-esteem predicts higher problematic social media use is consistent with the neurological vulnerability argument, though the directionality of the causal relationship remains debated.