CHAPEL HILL, N.C. — Researchers from UNC-Chapel Hill released a study this month about the impact social media has on middle schoolers' brain development.

The study reveals constant checking of social media affects the way a young teenager responds to feedback from peers.

What You Need To Know

  • Researchers from UNC-Chapel Hill released a study about the impact social media has on middle schoolers' brain development

  • The study finds constant checking of social media affects how a young teenager responds to feedback from peers

  • Researchers say middle schoolers who did not report checking social media as often became less sensitive to social feedback over time

Maria Maza, one researcher behind the study, says they surveyed 170 students in middle school from North Carolina.

“What we found was that young teens who reported checking social media habitually, meaning they were checking more than 15 times per day, these students became more sensitive to expected social feedback over time. In other words, these teens were becoming more attuned to social rewards and social punishments within their environment,” Maza said.

Maza says teens who did not report checking social media as often became less sensitive to social feedback over time.

“One of the big takeaways of the study is that we don't know whether these differences in brain sensitivity that we are seeing are necessarily good or necessarily bad. For example, the increasing sensitivity that teens who habitually check social media are showing to social information. This could potentially prompt future compulsive social media checking behaviors, which might not be a good thing, but it could also be an adaptive mechanism that helps teens navigate social interactions, particularly digital social interactions within their worlds, which are becoming increasingly digital,” Maza said.

Maza urged parents to listen to their children to understand how they use social media.

“Because this study didn't link the brain development to different social or emotional outcomes, it's hard to offer recommendations based solely on the results of this particular study," Maza said. "However, as somebody who works a lot with teens and a lot with parents around the issues of digital media, I think the best approach that parents can take is to listen to their teens, because at the end of the day, the people that know the most about teens' social media use are teens themselves."

Maza says the study's findings shouldn't be surprising.

“I think we expected somewhat these findings, though we did think that social media is altering brain development in some way. One surprising thing that we found was that differences in brain activity already existed at the beginning of the study. So at 12 years old, teens were already showing these differences within their brain, which led us to this idea that we need to start at earlier points and we need to start exploring how digital media, maybe for like third- and fourth-graders, might be affecting their development before going right even to middle school,” Maza said.