Social media platforms allow adolescents to have unprecedented opportunities for social interaction during a critical developmental period when their brains are especially sensitive to social feedback. In a study conducted by graduate students at the Winston Center on Technology and Brain Development of University of North Carolina, conducted a 3-year-long study that used brain imaging to explore whether adolescents’ frequency of checking social media platforms was associated with changes in their brains’ responses to anticipating and receiving social rewards and punishments.
The study found that the frequency of checking social media at the start of study was associated with different patterns of brain development in brain regions associated with motivation, salience of rewards, and cognitive control. Over the 3 years of the study, those teens who initially reported checking social media the most often – over fifteen times per day – showed increasing activity in these brain regions while waiting to see faces. This suggests that their brains were becoming more attuned to social rewards and punishments as they grew up. In contrast, the brains of the teens who did not check social media as often at the start of the study became less sensitive to social feedback over the same time period.
Article reference
Maza, M.T., Fox, K.A., Kwon, S.-J., Flannery, J.E., Lindquist, K.A., Prinstein, M.J., & Tezler, E.H. (2022). Association of habitual checking behaviors on social media with longitudinal functional brain development. JAMA Pediatrics.