The brains of teens who frequently check social media became increasingly sensitive to the anticipation of social feedback. Image credit: ghcassel
By Kara Fox & Maria Maza
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. We (graduate students at the Winston National Center on Technology Use, Brain, and Psychological Development) 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.
We recruited 169 sixth and seventh graders from public middle schools in North Carolina to be in our study. First, we asked them how often they checked social media and measured their brain activity while they played a social feedback game where they could try to earn social rewards (images of smiling faces) and avoid social punishment (images of angry faces). About one year later, we brought them back to measure their brain activity during the social feedback game, then another year later, we recorded their brain activity during the social feedback game for a third time.
We 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.
Considerations
Importantly, this increasing sensitivity to social information in teens who frequently check social media is not necessarily good or bad. While greater sensitivity might prompt future compulsive social media checking, it could also be an adaptive change that helps teens navigate social interactions in their increasingly digital worlds. More research needs to be done to determine how these differences might impact adolescents’ social and emotional outcomes.
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.