Parents whose children use apps such as Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat are being warned their brains may be being "reprogrammed".
A new study suggests social media use is making some teenagers almost constantly check their phones after becoming hooked on "likes". The more young people check social media, the more sensitive they become to "social feedback" in the form of likes and comments, psychologists have said.
Social feedback includes social rewards and punishments such as thumbs up and down, tagging, reporting content or star ratings.
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This increasing anticipation and sensitivity to receiving these kind of responses makes it hard for adolescents to fight the urge to check their accounts, according to researchers.
Dr Eva Telzer, assistant professor in developmental psychology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and co-author of the study, said: “Our findings suggest that checking behaviours on social media in early adolescence may tune the brain’s sensitivity to potential social rewards and punishments.
“Individuals with habitual checking behaviours showed initial hypoactivation but increasing sensitivity to potential social cues over time, those with nonhabitual checking behaviours showed initial hyperactivation and decreasing sensitivity over time.”
The researchers studied 178 12-year-olds from three public schools in the US. Each participant reported how often they checked the popular social media platforms Facebook, Snapchat and Instagram.
They then took part in a Social Incentive Delay task where their brain responses were measured when they were anticipating receiving social rewards and avoiding social punishments. During adolescence the brain undergoes significant changes, making it a crucial period of development.
Dr Telzer said: “The brain undergoes significant structural and functional reorganisation during adolescence. Neural regions involved in motivational relevance and affective become hyperactive, orienting teens to rewarding stimuli in their environment, particularly from peers.”
According to the researchers, 78% of 13 to 17-year-olds report checking their devices at least hourly each day and 46% said they check them "almost constantly".
Dr Telzer said: “Social media platforms provide adolescents with unprecedented opportunities for social interactions during a critical developmental period when the brain is especially sensitive to social feedback.”
She added: “This longitudinal cohort study suggests that social media behaviours in early adolescence may be associated with changes in adolescents’ neural development, specifically neural sensitivity to potential social feedback.
“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 was published in JAMA Pediatrics and was supported by a National Institutes of Health grant and the Winston Family Foundation.
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