Social media use linked to brain changes in teens, says research

The effect of social media use on children is a challenging area of ​​research as parents and policy makers try to verify the results of a vast experiment in the pipeline. Successive studies added pieces to the puzzle, detailing the implications of an almost constant flow of virtual interactions that begin in childhood.

A new study by neuroscientists at the University of North Carolina (USA) tries something new, performing successive brain scans on high school children between the ages of 12 and 15, a period of especially rapid brain development.

The researchers found that children who habitually checked their social media feeds around age 12 showed a distinct trajectory, with their sensitivity to social rewards from peers increasing over time. Teens with less engagement in social media followed the opposite path, with a drop in interest in social rewards.

The study, published Tuesday in JAMA Pediatrics, is among the first attempts to capture changes in brain function correlated with social media use over years.

The research has important limitations, the authors acknowledge. As adolescence is a period of expanding social relationships, brain differences may reflect a natural turn toward peers, which may be leading to more frequent social media use.

“We can’t make causal claims that social networking is changing the brain,” said Eva H. Telzer, an associate professor of psychology and neuroscience at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and one of the study’s authors.

But, she added, “Teens who habitually check their social media are experiencing dramatic changes in the way their brains respond, which could have long-term consequences in adulthood, setting the stage for brain development over time.” .

A team of researchers studied an ethnically diverse group of 169 students in grades 6 and 7 at a high school in rural North Carolina, dividing them into groups according to how often they reported checking their Facebook, Instagram and social media feeds. Snapchat.

By the age of 12, students already showed distinct patterns of behavior. Regular users reported checking their feeds 15 or more times a day; moderate users checked between 1 and 14 times; non-habitual users checked less than once a day.

Subjects received complete brain scans three times at approximately one-year intervals while playing a computer game that offered rewards and punishments in the form of smiling or frowning peers.

When performing the task, frequent checkers showed greater activation of three areas of the brain: reward processing circuits, which also respond to experiences such as earning money or risky behaviors; brain regions that determine importance, capturing what stands out in the environment; and the prefrontal cortex, which helps with regulation and control.

The results showed that “teens who grow up checking social media more often are becoming hypersensitive to feedback from their peers,” said Telzer.

The findings don’t capture the magnitude of brain changes, just their trajectory. And it is not clear, according to the authors, whether the changes are beneficial or harmful. Social sensitivity can be adaptive, showing that teens are learning to connect with others, or it can lead to social anxiety and depression if social needs are not met.

Researchers in the field of social media cautioned against drawing radical conclusions based on the findings.

“They’re showing that how you use them at any given time in your life influences how your brain develops, but we don’t know how much, or whether that’s good or bad,” said Jeff Hancock, founding director of the Social Networking Lab. from Stanford, who did not participate in the study. He said that many other variables could have contributed to these changes.

“What if these people joined a new team — a hockey team or a volleyball team — and they started having a lot more social interaction?” he said. It could be, he added, that researchers are “noticing the development of extraversion, and extroverts are more likely to check their social media.”

He described the paper as “very sophisticated work”, adding to recent research showing that social media sensitivity varies from person to person.

“There are people who have a neurological condition that means they are more likely to get checked frequently,” he said. “We are not all the same, and we must stop thinking that social media is the same for everyone.

Over the past decade, social networking has redefined the core experiences of adolescence, a period of rapid brain development.

Nearly all American teens engage through social media, with 97% going online every day and 46% reporting they are online “almost constantly,” according to the Pew Research Center. Black and Latino teens spend more hours on social media than their white peers, surveys show.

Researchers have documented a range of effects on children’s mental health. Some studies have linked social media use with depression and anxiety, while others have found little connection. A 2018 study of lesbian, gay, and bisexual teens found that social media provided validation and support, but also exposed them to hate speech.

Experts who reviewed the study said that because the researchers measured students’ social media use only once, around age 12, it’s impossible to know how this has changed over time or to rule out other factors that might affect brain development.

Without more information about other aspects of students’ lives, “it’s challenging to discern how specific differences in brain development play out in checking social media,” said Adriana Galvan, an expert on adolescent brain development at UCLA, who was not involved in the study. .

Jennifer Pfeifer, professor of psychology at the University of Oregon and co-director of the National Adolescent Science Council, said, “Every experience accumulates and is reflected in the brain.”

“I think you want to put it in this context,” she said. “So many other experiences that teens have are also going to change their brains. So we don’t want to get into a moral panic with the idea that social media use is changing teens’ brains.”

Telzer, one of the study’s authors, described the increased sensitivity to social feedback as “neither good nor bad”.

“It’s helping them connect with other people and get rewards from the things that are commonplace in their social world, which is engaging in online social interactions,” she said.

“That’s the new norm,” he added. “Understanding how this new digital world is influencing teens is important. It could be associated with changes in the brain, but it could be for good or bad. We don’t necessarily know the long-term implications yet.”