Social Media and Adolescents: The Risks, Impacts, and Solutions
KEY POINTS:
Background: An increasing number of adolescents are using social media for long periods of time every day.
Social media’s impacts: Chronic social media use can have negative impacts on a child’s mental health, brain health, sleep, body image, and more.
How we can improve: Work with youth to establish healthy habits, engage with support systems, and utilize treatments such as neurofeedback.
Background
As of 2020, there were an estimated 3.8 billion social media users worldwide, with a great percentage of users being in the younger population. Some adolescents reported spending at least an hour a day on social media, while other adolescents reported using sites such as YouTube and TikTok “almost constantly.”
Social media has opened up a whole new world of communication for adolescents. Though this communication can foster more social interactions, there are risks to using social media. These risks can be amplified when a tween or teen’s social media use becomes frequent and excessive. In fact, there are so many documented risks that the Surgeon General published an advisory for youth.
Social Media’s Impact on Adolescents’ Mental Health
Social media can harm a developing child’s mental health, especially with prolonged use. Numerous studies link chronic social media use to outcomes such as reduced academic performance, cognitive challenges, mental distress, physical health problems, and addictive behaviors. Certain dangers of social media also can harm mental health. For example, trolling, or a deliberate provocation of someone on social media, has negative effects on self-esteem and mood, and can lead to feelings of loneliness. And other dangers like cyberbullying can lead to mental distress, self-harm, and even suicidality.
Additionally, excessive social media use has been found to exacerbate symptoms in psychiatric disorders. Constant social media exposure can reinforce depressive symptoms, intensify pre-existing social anxiety symptoms, and increase overall stress levels. This can turn into a vicious cycle that exacerbates both social media use and psychiatric symptoms.
And increased social media use and increased psychiatric symptom presentation can be a vicious circle; for instance, depression and sleep issues can lead to more social media use, which then in turn exacerbates the depression and sleep issues. Finally, there exists an increased risk for those with neurodevelopmental disorders and excessive use of social media. Example: Teenagers with ADHD traits had an increased risk of developing problematic social media usage habits.
Social Media’s Impact on Adolescents’ Brain Health
There are also studies conducted that investigate neurophysiological effects of social media use. Research shows that brain matter involved in skills such as executive functioning, impulse control, and multitasking are negatively impacted by excessive social media use. For instance, researchers found reduced gray matter in areas of the brain associated with addictions and increased activity in areas associated with recruiting the brain’s resources for tasks; both of these instances reflect disrupted neural mechanisms leading to more addictive behaviors and diminished capacity to complete tasks.
Social Media’s Impact on Adolescents’ Sleep
Social media use, especially at night, is connected to delayed sleep onset and lower sleep quality, which can contribute to behavioral issues. One research article states, “It was seen that social media addiction in students was positively correlated with conduct and emotional problems, attention deficit/hyperactivity, peer problems and poor sleep quality, and negatively correlated with prosocial behaviours and sleep efficiency.”
Social Media’s Impact on Adolescents’ Body Image and Eating Behaviors
Studies have shown that high amounts of social media and image content exposure can have a negative impact on a person’s body image and eating behaviors. Comparing oneself to peers and celebrities and striving to fit body standards portrayed on social media can lead adolescents to harbor negative body perceptions. Certain types of content, such as “fitspiration” or “thinspos,” can exacerbate these feelings of inadequacy and dissatisfaction. While the intention behind some of this content may be to showcase and encourage a healthier lifestyle, they can inadvertently or subtly promote harmful messaging and behaviors. Adolescents, in particular, are at risk because they may lack the media literacy to critically evaluate what they see online. They can internalize unhealthy patterns of thinking and adopt harmful behaviors to achieve a certain look/ideal, without fully realizing the negative consequences.
Solutions and Tips
The good news is: there are strategies to help manage social media use and mitigate its harmful effects.
Establish boundaries such as screen time limits, content restrictions, turning off notifications, enabling privacy settings, etc.
Implement “tech-free” zones or times: designate certain spaces (bedroom, dining table, etc) and certain times (first hour when waking up, before bedtime, etc) as tech-free.
Encourage healthy habits such as physical activity, consistent sleep, offline activities and socialization, etc.
Teach children about cybersecurity and media literacy & foster open communication about social media use, the benefits and dangers of it, and its impact.
How Brain Resource Center Can Help
Neurofeedback is a non-invasive treatment that uses real-time brain monitoring and auditory/visual feedback to rewire the brain. Here’s what our clinical psychologist says about how neurofeedback can help a brain that is used to constant social media stimulation:
“Social media use and constant activation of reward systems can deplete dopamine reserves. In addition, this constant activation of reward systems has a direct effect on impulse control since there are constant distractions and engagement of unnecessary, harmful stimuli. Because social media features short bursts of information, it trains the brain to be inattentive. Overall, self-regulation is one of the strongest allies of reversing some of the negative effects of social media. Neurofeedback can improve self regulation, impulse control, and attention span.”
If you are interested in learning more about neurofeedback and how to get started, call us at 212-877-2130 or click the button below!