All the positive reinforcement of gossip, with none of the historical negative connotations because of the new name.

As with all renaming strategies, eventually the new name gets enough tarnish that its either given up, gets yet another new name. There was a pretty concerted push a few years ago to rename everything online as "viral" regardless of the original source and meaning of that name. Wasn't time yet, but soon enough "social media" will be for old people but the cool kids will continue doing the same old thing with a new name.

It's a combination of 2 very primitive (and hence innate) human instinct - Anxiety and Pleasure.

Anxiety - It's also called FOMO (Fear of Missing Out). If all our friends and family are on Facebook and we don't constantly login and read the feeds, we feel like we are "missing out" on all the fun and exicting stuff going on around us.

Pleasure - Social Media feeds our ego and give us pleasure when we post pics and "updates" and then few minutes later, a RED Icon notification pops up showing that so and so liked your post, commented on it etc. There is a reason why Facebook has no DISLIKE button. Don't forget 'Zuck' is a Psychology Minor.

Related Reading: "What is driving people to constantly check in with social media" => https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/rewired-the-psychology-...

Fear of missing out, or FoMO: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fear_of_missing_out

Also see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operant_conditioning_chamber

We used to evolve in situations where information was scarce and potentially relevant to our lives, so we would crave for every last bit of information in order to find the lion before it finds us.

The longer version (9 minutes) of this argument: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iYYuiWP0IpA

As mammals we are fundamentally social creatures, and if we can't socialize then we become anxious. It's built in - you need to be a part of the tribe/pack/village/whatever because over many years of evolution, going it alone wasn't a successful survival/reproductive strategy.

There are hacks to mitigate some of the negative effects, which pre-date FB et al. You might carry a photo of a loved one, and that's enough to trigger that part of your brain that craves contact. You might have a pet or a "companion animal" as they are called these days. Children (and some adults) have meta-pets - stuffed toy animals.

FB quite deliberately leverages these urges - it is designed to trigger all the fear-of-being-outside-the-tribe that evolution gave you. Why does it tell you that all your friends are at an event, say? To make you feel like you should have been paying more attention to FB so you could have gone too..

It's the same reason why kids were passing notes in school instead of paying attention. It's no longer called socializing/talking with friends. Its now social media/playing with your phone.

People want to feel like they are part of a group.