The American Psychological Association is sounding the alarm on the dangers of social media on young brains. They’ve got science to back them up.

According to an article at apa.org, “Starting around age 10, children’s brains undergo a fundamental shift that spurs them to seek social rewards, including attention and approval from their peers.” And at around the same time, “we hand them smartphones.”

Tween/teen brains and social rewards

Anyone who’s been through middle school, has observed middle schoolers, or is raising a middle schooler knows that peers become all-important at that age. Turns out, there’s a scientific reason.

Between the ages of 10 and 12, social rewards – compliments from peers, etc. – take on new weight. According to the APA, “Specifically, receptors for the ‘happy hormones’ oxytocin and dopamine multiply in a part of the brain called the ventral striatum, making preteens extra sensitive to attention and admiration from others.”

Mitch Prinstein, APA’s chief science officer, explains, “We know that social media activity is closely tied to the ventral striatum. This region gets a dopamine and oxytocin rush whenever we experience social rewards.” As it happens, social media apps like TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, and Snapchat are designed to give users a rush of the feel-good neurotransmitter dopamine when others “like” and “comment” on their feeds. Physiologically, as well as psychologically, it feels good to be liked, admired, and included.

Right next door to the ventral striatum is the ventral pallidum, the part of the brain crucial to motivating action. These two regions of the brain are older and deeper, driving instinctual behaviors. On top of them is the cortex, “an area that can help regulate emotional responses to social rewards.” In adults, the prefrontal cortex is more developed, enabling them to better regulate their emotional responses to social media rewards – or the lack thereof. Adults also have greater life experience and a more fixed sense of self which is less dependent upon the approval of others.

So without the mitigating factors that life brings, teens crave the approval of others, are hypersensitive to that approval, and their actions are much more likely to be affected by how they are perceived. It’s a toxic combination to throw in 24-7 peer approval meters in the form of social media.

Permanent and public social interactions

Kids have always been looking for approval during the adolescent years, which are a time to work on social skills and make connections. But there’s been a massive shift on the playing field where those things get worked out.

In the past, social interactions were largely in person. Whether or not someone complimented your outfit or laughed at your jokes, the interaction ended once you parted ways. Even on the phone, if you were put down or turned down for a date, no one else was present to hear it.

Jacqueline Nesi, Ph.D., an assistant professor of psychology at Brown University, has observed in her research that the critical difference between online and in-person interactions is their permanent – and often public – nature. As Prinstein notes, “After you walk away from a regular conversation, you don’t know if the other person liked it, or if anyone else liked it—and it’s over. That’s not true on social media.”

On social media, you can be approved or snubbed for all to see, where it remains in the public record. You can be judged by people you’ve never seen and will never meet but can somehow hold power over you if you value their opinion.

Protecting young users of social media

Young users of social media are particularly vulnerable. Social media use has been linked to mental health problems, including anxiety, depression, and poor body image. The younger the user, the more likely they are “to have body image issues, while kids who use Instagram or Snapchat before age 11 face a higher risk of online harassment.”

For this reason, in his U.S. Surgeon General’s Advisory, 2021, Dr. Vivek Murthy recommends that social media and tech companies share their research and help minimize fallout from their products.

Prinstein goes a step further. “It’s time we stopped trying to make a profit on kids’ developing brains,” he emphasized. “For the first time in human history, we have given up autonomous control over our social relationships and interactions, and we now allow machine learning and artificial intelligence to make decisions for us.”

“We have already seen how this has created tremendous vulnerabilities to our way of life. It’s even scarier to consider how this may be changing brain development for an entire generation of youth,” he said.

Read the full American Psychological Association article here.

Abrams, Zara. “Why young brains are especially vulnerable to social media.” American Psychological Association, 3 Feb 2022, https://www.apa.org/news/apa/2022/social-media-children-teens.

Photo by Sasun Bughdaryan on Unsplash