Social media use is associated with reduced preteen cognitive performance. Growing social media use among children is associated with decreased cognitive performance. According to a JAMA study on 6,554 adolescents between the ages of 9 and 13, students who used social media for longer durations performed worse on oral reading, memory, and vocabulary tests.
A typical preteen watches about 5 ½ hours of screens per day for non-school purposes. Much of that is on social media, both creating and watching content that other people have shared.
Unlike passive screen viewing, such as TV or video viewing, social media requires active engagement in the form of scrolling, checking one’s notifications, and interacting with individuals online. All these functions constantly occupy portions of the brain concerned with information processing and decision-making. This constant requirement to keep the brain “on” makes social media much more cognitively demanding than simply staring at a screen.
Earlier research has established that addictive social media usage patterns have been linked with elevated risks of mental health symptoms among youth. But its impact on cognition—how adolescents think, learn, and process information—is less certain.
Researchers in this study sought to determine if the quantity of time teenage youth spend on social media throughout their development affects their cognitive skills.
For the analysis, the researchers used data from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) study, a large-scale, longitudinal study that follows children from late childhood into adolescence. This network of 21 research sites is following 11,880 children through their brain development, cognitive capacities, and behavioral shifts as they grow year by year.
The researchers sampled 6,554 adolescents for study participation, including 51.1% male and 48.9% female. They assessed data at three time points: baseline (2016–2018, ages 9–10 years), year 1 (2017–2019), and year 2 (2018–2020).
To monitor how the social media activity of the children evolved as they aged, the team employed a statistical method named group-based trajectory modeling. With this methodology, they were able to spot three unique patterns of social media usage: most (57.6%) reported no or very minimal use, roughly one-third (36.6%) reported low but consistently growing use, and a minority (5.8%) reported high and increasing use over time.
To assess cognitive function, investigators applied the NIH Toolbox Cognition Battery—a battery of standardized tests measuring oral reading, sequential memory, pattern comparison speed, and picture vocabulary.
The findings showed that children in the high-increasing social media usage group had the lowest scores in several cognitive tests, particularly the language and memory tests. Scores on performance decreased with increased social media usage, as the children in the very low or no-use group had the highest scores across the board. The results also further justify stricter age limits on all social media platforms.
The research was observational, so it was able to discern associations but not cause. To develop effective interventions, more research is necessary to examine the processes underlying cognitive decline and how a given social media site contributes to these outcomes.
