Getting into the habit of checking social media 鈥渓ikes鈥� and comments in middle school can significantly change the way students鈥� 鈥渟ocial brains鈥� develop by the time they enter high school.
While children generally become more attuned to social interactions as they enter adolescence, those who are frequent, early social media users become particularly sensitive to anticipating social risks and rewards from their peers, finds a published this week in the journal JAMA Pediatrics.
It鈥檚 the latest study to connect newer media forms, like social networking sites or YouTube, to changes in adolescent development or behavior.
Researchers from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill tracked how often a diverse group of 169 6th and 7th graders reported checking Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat over a three-year period. Roughly every year, the students underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging, or fMRI鈥攚hich maps brain activity鈥攚hile playing virtual games featuring happy, angry, or blurred faces of other adolescents.
Over time, researchers found that 鈥渉abitual鈥� social media users鈥攖hose who checked their social feeds 15 times a day or more鈥攔esponded quicker and more intensely to perceived good or bad emotions from peers, compared to students who checked once a day or less. The areas of the brain associated with motivation and cognitive control became more active among the habitual students when expecting social rewards and punishments.
By contrast, students who used little social media reacted less strongly to social cues over the same time period.
鈥淪ocial media provides a constant and unpredictable stream of social inputs to adolescents during a critical developmental period when the brain becomes especially sensitive to social rewards and punishments,鈥� wrote researchers led by Maria Maza of UNC-Chapel Hill鈥檚 Developmental Social Neuroscience Lab.
For some students, they said, the greater long-term sensitivity associated with high social media use could lead to 鈥渃hecking behaviors on social media becoming compulsive and problematic,鈥� while for others, it could 鈥渞eflect an adaptive behavior that allows them to better navigate their increasingly digital environment.鈥�
Research piles up on media exposure
The current JAMA study comes on the heels of a similar longitudinal study published last month in the Journal of Adolescent Health, which found that 9- and 10-year-olds who spent hours a day playing video games or watching online algorithm-based videos (like YouTube) had a higher risk of developing obsessive-compulsive disorders.
鈥淭here鈥檚 this ongoing dispute now about whether social media causes depression and suicidal ideation, or does it just exacerbate it in kids that already have it? Well, some kids are more prone, whether through genetic predisposition or behavioral predisposition, to the effects of certain types of media,鈥� said Dr. Dimitri Christakis, the director of the Center for Child Health, Behavior, and Development at Seattle Children鈥檚 Research Institute, who was not part of the study.
鈥淚 think the real question going forward is, how do we create a healthy online experience? No one would suggest, or at least most people wouldn鈥檛 suggest, that we eliminate it entirely,鈥� he added.
The results of both studies may be particularly important as generations of students grow up enmeshed in social media platforms. In a , nearly 80 percent of those ages 13-17 told the Pew Research Center that they check at least one of their social media feeds at least hourly, and more than a third said they did so 鈥渁lmost constantly.鈥�
The older the teenagers were, the stronger the social media attachment: 48 percent of students ages 13-14 and 58 percent of those 15 and up said it would be difficult for them to give up using social media.
