How to Connect this Potent Hormonal Soup of Cows and Social Media

Recently, I sadly faced trouble in the hormonal anatomy of an animal with a simple conflation to the human experience. The power of hormones to regulate life’s processes was undeniable both to reject natural order, and possibly, the opposite to attract unnatural behaviour as it may relate to social media.

Here is how this strangest amalgamation can be made in 3 parts between the cow’s experience versus the human’s social media experience with consequences for the human race. The probability may be questionable but the possibility is logical and emotional because hormones are such an essential part of all life’s processes that can present a different view of how social media impacts our self-identify, survival objectives and moral codes.

Because of lack of hormones an orphan calf, Johnny Walker, will need to be bottle fed and ostracized.

Because of too many hormones, a teen girl on the internet landscape may make mistakes that may affect her adult lifetime.

Part 1: Cows’ Hormones

I was witness to an animal’s aberration, an unexpected painful travesty with long-term effects. A mother cow had a calf and rejected her little boy by not licking or feeding him, and kicking him if he tried to suckle. Every other mother cow after birthing thoroughly licked and welcomed their wobbly headed youngster and long tongue to latch unto a teat for the enriched nurturing colostrum milk.

But this time, there was no bonding with this helpless baby, limiting serious survival. But was it the mother’s fault or something missing? In fact, what had gone wrong, was a hormonal inefficiency.

The bonding process, which involves the cow identifying and learning to recognize her new calf, wanting to care for and protect it, is a complex blend of hormone-induced and learned behavior.

The cow’s birthing process involves hormonal changes in progesterone and estrogen with rising oxytocin levels in the brain triggering maternal behavior with uterine contractions. The role of smell and the importance of odor in the bonding process is why any cow can pick out her calf in a herd.

What had gone wrong was that this calf at birth was toweled dry by human intervention, not realizing the bonding hormonal value of the afterbirth’s fluids and scents to affect particularly the secretion of oxytocin.

The mother cow simply didn't recognize this handsome, brown, curly-haired animal as her own offspring.

Part 2: Human Hormones

We have hormones that are essential chemicals released by endocrine glands with multiple functions and regulations from food metabolism to growth and developments with both physiological and psychological controls to help maintain homeostasis. Such powerful secretions can affect our functions and create dysfunctions that result in depression, anxiety and even suicidal thoughts.

The forebrain has the hypothalamus that produces hormones called neurotransmitters that regulate hunger, thirst, sleep, mood and emotions. Two common ones studied are dopamine and serotonin. One powerful hormone linked to them is also called oxytocin.

Interestingly, human mothers also need oxytocin to help move milk from the ducts in the breast to the nipple, and to foster a bond between mom and baby.

This powerful hormone has the power to regulate our emotional responses and pro-social behaviors, including trust, empathy, curiosity, positive memories, bonding process, and positive communication.

Oxytocin’s connection to serotonin and dopamine, creates a trio team often called the “happy hormones” that are released when you feel an attraction to or care about someone. They produce the butterflies in your stomach and the buzz that love songs are written about. It is produced if sexually excited or in the act of falling in love, often called the “love hormone” or “cuddle hormone.”

The problem here is that seeking these more happy-feelings-good- engagements can can lead to addiction described as repetitive craving and weakened self-control. Just think how oxytocin may stimulate the teen brain prior to logical judgement development in their 20's.

Part 3: Social Media Hormones, Teenagers and Humanity

There have been countless scientific and psychological reports, some long term, showing how social media affects the teenager’s brain and impacts their reality by setting up superficial objective physical standards, lack of self esteem and feelings of depression and isolation.

Selfies become an addiction… LIKE ME becomes like sugar cubes — I want more. I'll do what I have to do to be liked!

Shockingly, there are more reports of teenagers contemplating self- harm where normal life becomes abnormal and untenable. An analysis by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in August found the suicide rate among teenage girls ages 15 to 19 hit a 40-year high in 2015. Between 2007 and 2015, the rates doubled among girls and rose by more than 30 percent among teen boys.

There is much to worry about today’s “Screenagers” coming of age in a culture of false images, superficial tweets, materialistic influencers and misinformation. They may lack diversified educational norms, communal values and intrinsic rewards based on effort. Their hormones may be overstimulated by daily hours simulating a different adulterated reality.

How much personal development, humanity itself, is related to this hormonal soup we share with animals?

Strangest Potent Hormonal Soup…what else can it be?

The logic shows how powerful hormones can be … powerful enough to reject maternal instinct as well as powerful enough to create attraction and even addiction.

Nothing else can explain why a nice normal cow for lack of oxytocin can stand by looking at her hungry baby not licking him but kicking him if he tries to nuzzle for milk. To survive, he will need to be bottle fed with a mixture of colostrum powder and water. He will grow smaller without mother’s antibiotics, more exposed to diseases, less value in the marketplace. In the pasture I see he is isolated not allowed to bond with any other cow breaking my heart...no lack of personal oxytocin.

My heart also breaks when I see teen girls with an abundance of oxytocin in trying to find a place to belong, be loved, and survive on the social media circus. What else can explain their anxiety, lack of life satisfaction and mental health? In fact, it’s getting harder to deny damage that overexposure to social media is doing to teen girls especially and humanity in general.

I feel I should add that the cattle industry helps to feed a country. What exactly does the Selfie paranoia help to better society?

I close my eyes and wonder how many teen Jenny or Johnny Walkers are being created.

Annemarie Berukoff