A sophisticated new study tracked the relationship between early teenage social media use and brain changes over a three-year period. A new study finds that checking social media more frequently is associated with greater sensitivity to social rewards, but experts confirm it’s due to detected brain changes. It emphasizes that it cannot be used or declared harmful from these preliminary findings.
Screens are rapidly permeating modern life, making it very difficult for researchers trying to understand how they affect health and development. It means everything from using your laptop for schoolwork to scrolling through Instagram on your smartphone.
So despite some studies that lumped all screen time into one homogenous activity, researchers are beginning to separate different digital behaviors. For example, an interesting 2019 study found that television and social media activity correlated with increased symptoms of depression in his teens, while video games and computer use had very little to do with it. There were no adverse effects.
This new study by neuroscientists at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill focuses on the neurodevelopmental effects of social media use in teenagers. This unique study recruited 169 students and followed them for 3 years.
At the beginning of the study, each 12-year-old participant was asked how many times they checked their social media feeds each day. Those who checked social more than 15 times her day were classified as regular users. A non-habitual user checked her social media less than once a day, while a moderate user was somewhere in between. During his next three years, the participant underwent her annual MRI scans while playing a game designed to induce brain activity in areas associated with social feedback responses.
A surprising finding reveals that children with habitual social media checking behavior showed greater activity in parts of the brain associated with social expectations and social rewards. Over the years of study, the sensitivity of these brain regions has increased.
“The findings suggest that children who grow up checking social media more often are more sensitive to feedback from their peers,” explains lead author Eva Telzer. .
Due to the narrow scope of the study, Telzer is careful to emphasize that these findings do not necessarily mean that social media is causing harmful changes in the adolescent brain. Not only could the findings not confirm casualties, but they may simply be detecting natural developmental changes in certain children, which is neither good nor bad.
“I don’t know if this is a good thing or a bad thing. If teenagers’ brains are adapted to navigate and react to the world they live in, it could be a very good thing.” No,” Telzer told HealthDay.
Jeff Hancock of the Stanford Social Media Lab told The New York Times that the new research was “very sophisticated” but that social media triggers these specific brain changes. and suggested that it was unclear whetherAddressing the chicken-and-egg question, Hancock said research may have detected the development of certain personality traits, which may lead some children to frequent social media in the first place. are more likely to be attracted to using it on social media. cause These brain changes from social media use may simply reflect certain traits.
“[The researchers could be] Mr Hancock said: “Extroverts are more likely to check social media. People with neurological conditions tend to be attracted to checking frequently. We should stop thinking that social media is the same for everyone.”
A new study was published in JAMA Pediatrics.
Source: University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
