A new study finds 9- to 13-year-olds with increasing social networking media exposure performed poorer on reading, memory, and vocabulary tests compared with peers who used little or no social media, according to an Education Week article.
Kids with rising social media use performed 4 points lower on cognitive tests.
The findings are timely. Hundreds of school districts have sued major social media companies contending that their products harm students’ mental health, negatively affect learning, and make schools invest significant resources to managing the adverse consequences.
Many studies on social media’s effects on kids focus on mental health outcomes such as depression or anxiety. Much less understood is how social media use affects cognitive development, says Jason Nagata, the lead researcher of the study and a professor at the University of California, San Francisco.
“There are still many unanswered questions about how social media use affects developing brains,” says Nagata. “Parents and educators often ask: How old should a child be before getting a social media account? What does social media use mean for learning, reading, and memory?”
Nagata’s team analyzed data from 6,554 children at three time periods: baseline (2016-18, ages 9-10), year one (2017-19), and year two (2018-20). Three distinct social media patterns emerged:
- No to very low use (58%): kids who spent virtually no time on social media;
- Low increasing use (37%): kids who spent about one additional hour per day on social media by age 13;
- High increasing use (6%): kids who spent about three additional hours per day on social media by age 13 than they did at the start of the study.
Adolescents with low but increasing social media use performed an average of 1-2 points lower on reading and memory tests than kids who spent virtually no time on social media. Students with high increasing use performed up to 4 points lower, after accounting for factors such as age, sex, race/ethnicity, socioeconomic status, and other screen time use.
The results don’t seem too concerning, given that most kids are in the no-to-very-low-use group and kids with higher usage still scored near the average for the tests, says Dan Florell, a professor of psychology at Eastern Kentucky University, who was not involved with the study.
But Nagata stresses that even a few points can make a difference. “This [study] is only over a two-year period,” he says. “I think that with more time, [the differences] can also add up, and at population level, with millions of kids being affected, they can matter.”
One reason kids with low-increasing or high-increasing social media use might score lower on reading and memory tests is because their social media time “might displace time for school work or reading or even sleep or rest,” Nagata says.
Rapidly switching between apps, constant notifications, and short-form videos can train the brain to seek novelty, making it harder to sustain concentration on longer or more complex tasks, he says.
Social media’s constant stream of information can also overload working memory and leave less mental capacity for deep thinking or problem-solving, he adds.
The 9-13 age range is a key brain developmental period for kids, Florell says. At puberty, the brain goes through a growth spurt and seeks input to shape its new capacity so it fits the environment it’s in.
“When you flood it with a lot of social media, it starts pruning parts of your brain to make it more amenable to that usage,” Florell says. And as the study suggests, “social media usage is maybe not the best when you want to do more learning.”
Schools play an important role in addressing social media use with students and their families, experts say.
Support can come in the form of digital literacy lessons, says Michael Robb, the head of research for Common Sense Media, a nonprofit that studies the effect of media and technology on children.
“Some digital literacy and self-regulation lessons in upper elementary grades might be really helpful,” Robb says. Educators should talk about attention and multitasking and how we emotionally respond to what we see online. This discussion should occur in tandem with or hopefully before students get their first [social media] accounts, he says.
Talk about usage in moderation, Florell says. Ask questions such as: How do you feel when you go on social media? Is it satisfying to you? Is it something you enjoy? What are other things you enjoy? Do you like playing outdoors? Do you like hanging out with your friends? Do you like going to the movies together?
Schools also should work with families on how and when parents introduce devices and social media into their kids’ lives, Robb says. Offer parents training and host information nights to make them aware of what the risks and rewards are for their families, he says.
“This is a whole-child issue, where the joint attention of teachers and parents together can make this a healthier environment for children,” Robb says.
Education Week
