The effect of social media use on children is a fraught area of research as parents and policymakers try to ascertain the results of a vast experiment already in full swing.A new study by neuroscientists at the University of North Carolina tries something new, conducting successive brain scans of middle-schoolers 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 at around age 12 showed a distinct trajectory, with their sensitivity to social rewards from peers heightening over time.Teenagers with less engagement in social media followed the opposite path.
The study, published on Tuesday in Jama Paediatrics, is among the first attempts to capture changes to brain function correlated with social media use over a period of years.
"We can't make causal claims that social media is changing the brain," said Dr Eva H. Telzer, an associate professor of psychology and neuroscience at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and one of the authors of the study.
But, she added, "teens who are habitually checking their social media are showing these pretty dramatic changes in the way their brains are responding."
A team of researchers studied an ethnically diverse group of 169 students in the sixth and seventh grades from a middle school in rural North Carolina, splitting them into groups according to how often they reported checking Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat feeds.
At around age 12, the students already showed distinct patterns of behaviour. Habitual users reported checking their feeds 15 or more times a day; moderate users checked between one and 14 times; nonhabitual users checked less than once a day.
The subjects received full brain scans three times, at approximately one-year intervals, as they played a computerised game.
While carrying out the task, the frequent checkers showed increasing activation of three brain areas: reward-processing circuits, which also respond to experiences like winning money; brain regions that determine salience, picking out 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," Dr Telzer said.
The findings do not capture the magnitude of the brain changes, only their trajectory. And it is unclear, the authors said, whether the changes are beneficial or harmful.
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