Thousands of years of brain evolution have left people prone to Facebook and Twitter addiction, a psychologist has said.
Since the beginning of the human race, our brains have gradually increased in size over countless generations.
But that hit a wall around 20,000 years ago when the pattern started to reverse. Professor Bruce Hood believes it is due to our increased domestication.
He says our predecessors were geared up for a constant survival battle, but we are now "natural gossips" whose brains craze constant engagement with others.
Social media allows us to indulge this urge on a larger scale, the American academic says.
Addicted to Facebook? Evolution could be to blame
"The fact that many people have a compulsion to engage with lots of people via social media isn't really that surprising," he said.
"Our brains have evolved for us to be social animals.
"What's interesting is that you might assume that the wider exposure to differing views that social media brings would make us all much more open-minded.
"What we see in reality of course is the opposite. People seem more likely to slot into niche groups of thought online than in real life."
He makes the claim in his latest book, Domesticated Brain.
He says that as people settled into fixed communities their brains relaxed as they did not need to outwit everyone around them.
This opened up opportunities for higher thinking, he said.
It also marked the start of "group intelligence" in which knowledge is passed down through generations.
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