Artist trained rats to take selfies to make a point about social media

This is the best summary I could come up with:

The French artist trained two pet store rodents to take selfies in exchange for sweet treats.

He says it's not unlike the way people engage with social media — at first for the likes, but eventually just to trigger a flood of feel-good chemicals in our brains.

In Lignier's box, when Arthur and Augustin pushed the lever, a camera would snap their picture and display it on a screen in front of them.

Lignier says the installation draws a connection between how the rats use the photo box and how humans use social media.

In an interview with the Guardian, addictions expert Anna Lembke, author of Dopamine Nation, called the smartphone a "modern-day hypodermic needle."

But while Lignier says Selfie Rats is meant to make us think about what drives our behaviours online, it's not necessarily a scathing critique of internet culture.

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