For all the good that connecting with old friends on social media can create, it can also do bad things for your brain. You’ve probably had that experience where you go to check Facebook for just a few minutes and three hours later wonder what happened to the time. (Look at the kitties!) Or you anxiously await your friends’ “Likes” and ponder when you turned into a lab rat pressing the lever for pellets. A German study showed that one in three people say they feel worse after spending time on Facebook than they did before, with “worse” meaning lonely, frustrated, and/or sad. Another study showed that the more people used Facebook, the worse they felt. Researchers call this “Facebook depression.” So much for the joy of connecting with friends. And that thing about the lab rat? It’s true: being on social media can feed your brain’s tendency toward addiction. It wants rewards, and what’s more rewarding than seeing a thumbs-up on your post? One study at Stanford University showed that people who spent a lot of time on social media have trouble filtering out unimportant information and have more trouble remembering things. But that doesn’t mean you have to quit social media cold turkey and go live in a cabin in the woods. In moderation, connecting with others via social media can help you stay informed, help you express yourself, and help you become part of a greater community. The key word is moderation.