Hundreds of millions of people populate the vast expanse of internet culture, and occasionally, a new thing comes along that upstarts are successfully earning clicks with like wildfire. Meet the “Dopamine Girl,” a trend on social media that has thousands hooked to her visual and psychological appeal. And what this popularity surge might mean for both the individual user and the overarching societal norms is explored in greater detail within this article.
The Dopamine Girl Explained
The Dopamine Girl is hardly a fad — she is an iteration of the profile that works on a neurochemical level, probably because it was selected via said loops. The way we feel happy and motivated is closely connected to dopamine, which is a brain chemical that acts as a neurotransmitter in the brain — and helps us feel pleasure and satisfaction. And so the Dopamine Girl is a trope, or a media and art character existing predominantly to excite these dopamine responses — in simple terms, she is manufactured to be as attractive as she can be, in every sense of those words.
Visuals Are Now Dominating Social Media
Social media algorithms have also played an important role in the rise of the Dopamine Girl. Trending content on platforms such as Instagram, TikTok, and Pinterest tends to reward the value of presenting content which makes viewers stay there for a longer period. As such, content creators design images and videos that are not only aesthetically pleasing but also specifically engineered to trigger increased neural activity. The things that make both an attractive person and a Dopamine Girl are quite similar; bright colors, smiles and symmetrical faces make them hard to resist.
The Numbers Behind the Trend
According to data from social media analytics tools, posts marked with the #DopamineGirl hashtag have enjoyed a 60x growth in total engagement in the last half-year. On Instagram, posts marked with some variation of the #bootcheck tag have leapt 75% in likes and comments, while the #bootcheck subtag on TikTok has gathered over half a billion views in the last three months alone. This shows the type of impact the concept had, and of course the mesmerising power of dopamine-evoking imagery.
Cultural Impact and Criticism
Naturally, a trend of this size has its critics. This has led to concerns that this trend could amplify unattainable beauty standards and promote shallow content consumption. Some others, however, see it as a simple method to know and express themselves through arts and media.
Either way, what is clear is that the Dopamine Girl touches on a powerful, hardwired system in our brains. Both for creators and consumers, knowing how and other what visuals can emotionally impact us and why it happens will help all of us to engage with this more consciously and creatively.
Final Thoughts
The Dopamine Girl trend is just one example of the profound ways in which psychological mechanisms are woven into that content. It is another illustration of the great power exerted upon us by both visual and emotional cues, on how we act and on the choices we make. And, as this trend continues to develop, it should be interesting to see its impact on digital content creation and consumption.
To learn more about the science behind those kinds of visual trends, dive into what is dopamine girl, and how dopamine generating visual content can be constructed to catch our interest and keep us there.