Checking Social Media Habitually May Affect Adolescent Brain Development: Study

According to a national study authored by Dr. Brain Primack, dean of the College of Education and Health Professions and professor of public health at the University of Arkansas, “Young adults who increased their use of social media were significantly more likely to develop depression within six months.” ShutterStock

Habitual checking of social media could be affecting neural development in adolescents’ brains, leaving them sensitive to the social feedback of the tangible world, according to a University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill study.

Published on Tuesday in JAMA Pediatrics, the study (pdf) explored what the long-term effects could be for adolescents who frequently check their social media

Relying on magnetic resonance imaging and self-reporting, the study followed the social media use of 178 12- to 13-year-old participants in three North Carolina public schools over two years.

The adolescents were evaluated on their use of Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat.

“In the span of a generation, social media has dramatically changed the landscape of adolescent development, providing unprecedented opportunities for social interactions around the clock,” the study says. “Social media provides a constant and unpredictable stream of social inputs to adolescents during a critical development period when the brain becomes especially sensitive to social rewards and punishments.”

The instant gratification of immediate access and validation is designed to entrap the user’s attention, the study suggests.

“’Likes,’ notifications, and messages arrive unpredictably on a maximally powerful variable reinforcement schedule, conditioning individuals to check social media habitually in anticipation of this social feedback,” the study says.

Seventy-eight percent of 13- to 17-year-olds report checking their devices hourly, and 46 percent report checking “almost constantly,” the study reports, leaving adolescents “uniquely vulnerable” to addictive scrolling.

“Adolescents’ habitual checking of social media may be exacerbating an already enhanced neural response to the anticipation of salient social feedback,” the study says. “Additionally, the motivational salience of social contexts may undermine adolescents’ ability to engage in cognitive control and, subsequently, to regulate their behaviors.”

As a result, the study says the continual interaction within the social-media reward system “may increase neural reactivity to reward-related cues,” which reduces an adolescent’s ability to “resist urges to check social media.”

Smartphones are increasing the anxiety teens are already facing. Limiting screen time, and supervising your children's social media can help parents identify when children are dealing with stress and anxiety. Shutterstock

Addiction By Design

In 2018 the BBC reported on two Silicon Valley insiders who compared social media interface to drug and gambling addiction.

“It’s as if they’re taking behavioural cocaine and just sprinkling it all over your interface and that’s the thing that keeps you like coming back and back and back”, former Mozilla and Jawbone employee Aza Raskin told the BBC. “Behind every screen on your phone, there are generally like literally a thousand engineers that have worked on this thing to try to make it maximally addicting.”

According to the BBC, Raskin designed the infinite scroll feature that facilitates an endless swiping downward through content without clicking, an innovation that keeps users looking down at their phones longer than they had planned.

“If you don’t give your brain time to catch up with your impulses,” Raskin said, “you just keep scrolling.”

Another former employee with social media compared its use to using a slot machine.

Sandy Parakilas told the BBC that when he tried to stop, it was like he “was quitting cigarettes,” a risk that he said others recognized as well, resulting in a business model designed to engage and “suck as much time out of your life as possible and then selling that attention to advertisers.”

Leah Pearlman, co-inventor of Facebook’s ‘Like’ button, told the BBC that she had become hooked on Facebook after investing her self-esteem into the amount of ‘Likes’ she received in the social media world.

Pearlman said she would check her social media when she needed validation, and when she felt lonely and insecure.

“Suddenly, I thought I’m actually also kind of addicted to the feedback,” Pearlman said.

In the last decade, social media use by adolescents has increased, the study says.

“Further research examining long-term prospective associations between social media use, adolescent neural development, and psychological adjustment is needed to understand the effects of a ubiquitous influence on development for today’s adolescents,” the study says.