1761 Pridebook

A recent study at Harvard University came to an astonishing conclusion. Facebook and Twitter are addictive because they tap into a hardwired human instinct. That instinct? To tell people about ourselves.

Yep, sharing and/or bragging is hardwired. Using Twitter and Facebook actually causes good stuff to happen in your brain. Ooh. I'm gonna Tweet that right now. "Had a dopamine surge as I tweeted this tweet. Just can't stop. Doing it again."
Next up, Tweeting Twelve Step.
Researchers scanned subjects’ brains and found that when they talked about their lives the same reward centers were triggered as those activated when having sex, eating food, or making money.
Well there you go. Narcissism is hard-wired.
Finally, something that explains the recession-proof steady sales in mirrors and karaoke.
I'd take it one step further. It's not just narcissism. It's narcissism made easy. One could say that many of the great novels of all time were narcissistic works. Remembrance of Things Past is like a Facebook posting on steroids. And really, all acts of creation are acts of sharing oneself. Most novels have an autobiographical element.
But here's the difference. Novels are hard work. So it used to be a lot tougher to "share."
But not with Facebook and Twitter. One can share any old thing any old time. Regardless of how inane or tawdry. Samuel Morse famously exclaimed on the invention of the telegraph, "What hath god wrought." It was the miracle of communication laboriously dotted, dashed, and sprinkled over long distances.
But what social media hath wrought is a veritable deluge of drivel. The natural brake to a glut of mediocrity, namely work, has been taken away. And we are undone by the two hardwired deadly sins. Pride and sloth.
Narcissism accentuated by laziness.
There's a formula for productivity.
(I just had to share that.)
America, ya gotta love it.