AROUSAL WITHOUT RELEASE: SEXUALITY, THREAT, AND THE ALGORITHMIC ENGINE OF ENDLESS SEEKING

Feb. 2026

What happens when a technological environment continuously stimulates the same arousal systems that evolved for survival, sexuality, and social belonging — and keeps them activated without resolution? Social media platforms systematically target this shared arousal substrate by delivering novelty, unpredictability, social comparison, sexualized imagery, and moralized threat in rapid succession. These stimuli recruit neural systems involved in salience detection and motivational activation, particularly dopaminergic pathways that encode incentive salience rather than discrete emotional categories (Berridge & Robinson, 1998; Schultz, 1998). At this subcognitive level, the brain registers intensity and relevance before it differentiates between fear, sexuality, competition, or attachment, allowing heterogeneous stimuli to converge on overlapping physiological mechanisms.

Variable reinforcement schedules intensify this convergence. Intermittent rewards produce stronger and more persistent anticipatory activation than predictable ones (Ferster & Skinner, 1957; Schultz, 1998). Social media platforms reproduce this structure through infinite scroll, fluctuating visibility metrics, and irregular social feedback. Neuroimaging findings indicate that social rewards, such as reputation gains, activate the nucleus accumbens and related circuitry associated with motivational salience (Meshi, Morawetz, & Heekeren, 2013). Importantly, dopaminergic systems are not coding pleasure itself but anticipation and pursuit. In this sense, the digital environment keeps the organism in a state analogous to pre-orgasmic tension: arousal is amplified and sustained, but consummatory closure is repeatedly deferred. The system is organized around seeking, not satisfaction.

Because autonomic arousal precedes cognitive labeling, misattribution becomes likely when stimuli shift rapidly. Research on excitation transfer demonstrates that residual physiological activation can be reinterpreted as attraction, aggression, or anxiety depending on contextual cues (Dutton & Aron, 1974; Zillmann, 1971). In digital environments saturated with sexualized imagery, competitive comparison, and moral outrage, activation generated by threat-related content may blend with sexuality-driven motivation, while social evaluation may be experienced as either desire for visibility or fear of exclusion. The organism remains mobilized, yet the object of mobilization changes too quickly for stable symbolic integration. What persists is arousal without coherent consummation.

Over time, repeated cycles of sustained anticipation without resolution may contribute to chronic low-grade sympathetic activation and stress-related symptoms. Empirical research associates intensive social media use with increased anxiety, sleep disruption, and difficulties in emotional regulation (Keles, McCrae, & Grealish, 2020; Montag & Elhai, 2020). Unlike discrete defensive reactions or resolved sexual arousal that culminate in parasympathetic recovery, digital engagement rarely provides physiological completion. Instead, it maintains a loop of excitation, expectation, and partial reward. Prolonged exposure to such unresolved activation may tax stress-regulation systems and contribute to cumulative allostatic load (McEwen, 2007).

In this sense, social media platforms orchestrate overlapping systems related to defense, sexuality, and social evaluation within compressed temporal sequences while structurally preventing full discharge. The architecture of the feed sustains appetitive tension — analogous to a perpetual approach toward climax that is algorithmically postponed. Distinct evolutionary systems — threat detection, sexuality, and group belonging — become entangled within a single digital ecology organized around endless seeking. The result is a chronic anticipatory state: compelling because it promises release, destabilizing because it withholds it.

Liviu Poenaru

References

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