How social media is impacting mental health among teens
“Our brains, our bodies, and our society have been evolving together to shape human development for millennia. … Within the last 20 years, the advent of portable technology and social media platforms [has been] changing what took 60,000 years to evolve,” Mitch Prinstein, the chief science officer at the American Psychological Association (APA), told the Senate Judiciary Committee this wHumans are social creatures, and we learn through social interaction. In fact, said Prinstein, “numerous studies have revealed that children’s interactions with peers have enduring effects on their occupational status, salary, relationship success, emotional development, mental health, and even on physical health and mortality over 40 years later. These effects are stronger than the effects of children’s IQ, socioeconomic status and educational attainment.”eek. “We are just beginning to understand how this may impact youth development.”The problem is, social media platforms often (though not always) emphasize metrics over the humans behind the “likes” and “followers,” which can lead teens to simply post things about themselves, true or not, that they hope will draw the most attention. And these cycles, Prinstein warned, “create the exact opposite qualities needed for successful and adaptive relationships (i.e., [they are] disingenuous, anonymous, depersonalized). In other words, social media offers the ’empty calories of social interaction,’ that appear to help satiate our biological and psychological needs, but do not coResearch suggests that young people form and maintain friendships online. These relationships often afford opportunities to interact with a more diverse peer group than offline, and the relationships are close and meaningful and provide important support to youth in times of stress.”ntain any of the healthy ingredients necessary to reap benefits.”Research examining adolescents’ brains while on a simulated social media site, for example, revealed that when exposed to illegal, dangerous imagery, activation of the prefrontal cortex was observed suggesting healthy inhibition towards maladaptive behaviors,” Prinstein told lawmakers.When teens viewed these same illegal and/or dangerous behaviors on social media alongside icons suggesting the negative content had been “liked” by others, the part of the brain that keeps us safe stopped working as well, Prinstein said, “suggesting that the ‘likes’ may reduce youths’ inhibition (i.e., perhaps increasing their proclivity) toward dangerous and illegal behavior.”Prinstein spoke specifically about websites or online accounts that promote disordered-eating behaviors and nonsuicidal self-injury, like self-cutting.
“Research indicates that this content has proliferated on social media sites, not only depicting these behaviors, but teaching young people how to engage in [them], how to conceal these behaviors from adults, actively encouraging users to engage in these behaviors, and socially sanctioning those who express a desire for less risky behavior.”According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, “youth who report any involvement with bullying behavior are more likely to report high levels of suicide-related behavior than youth who do not report any involvement with bullying behavior.”
Earlier this month, a 14-year-old New Jersey girl took her own life after she was attacked by fellow students at school and a video of the assault was posted on social media.Research suggests more than half of adolescents are on screens right before bedtime, and that can keep them from getting the sleep they need. Not only is poor sleep linked to all sorts of downsides, including poor mental health symptoms, poor performance in school and trouble regulating stress, Prinstein said, but “inconsistent sleep schedules are associated with changes in structural brain development in adolescent years. In other words, youths’ preoccupation with technology and social media may deleteriously affect the size of their brains.”