Newly published findings from the ongoing Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) study, one of the largest studies on youth development, links increased social media use during adolescence to lower cognitive performance. Dr. Jason Nagata of the University of California San Francisco, along with his colleagues, explained in their research letter that “there is a paucity of studies that have analyzed the associations between distinct longitudinal social media usage patterns and multiple domains of cognitive functioning.”
Their project thus aims to contribute to an underdeveloped field of interest in cognitive science. As per Nagata’s findings, this study contributes to literature by “[examining] the relationship between longitudinal patterns of social media use and cognitive performance two years later in a diverse, national sample of early adolescents.”
The ABCD study tracked 6,554 American adolescents, of which 51.1 per cent were male and 48.9 per cent were female. Data was collected from three time points — baseline (2016 to 2018, ages nine to 10 years), year one (2017 to 2019), and year two (2018 to 2020). The conclusions are based on results from oral and memory testing the adolescents were put through every other year, as well as the ongoing yearly surveillance of their social media usage.
Between ages nine to 13, three trajectory groups appeared — no or low social media use (roughly 58 per cent of participants), low increasing social media use (roughly 37 per cent of participants) and high increasing social media use (roughly six per cent of participants). The low increasing group’s social media usage reached about an hour a day by the age of 13, while the high increasing group spent about three or more hours on social media daily.
The ultimate findings from the study are comparisons made with the no or low social media use group.
From these comparisons, Nagata concluded that both low and high increases in social media use throughout early adolescence “were significantly associated with lower performance in specific aspects of cognitive function, supporting a prior finding that greater screen time was negatively but weakly associated with adolescent cognitive performance.”
Although not participants in the study, U of M students who were adolescents during the study period shared their lived experience with social media and how they believe it has affected their cognitive abilities, mainly in terms of learning and time-management.
Gina Ali, a fifth-year English major in the faculty of arts explained that, like the study participants, her social media usage began at age 11-12. “I [didn’t have] a device of my own until I was 14,” she shared. Her limited access to social media, coupled with the structured regiment of middle school — including a ban on phones in class — helped her regulate her social media usage in adolescence. Now in adulthood, she said social media is directly impacting her ability to study as well as her overall productivity.
Ali believed her increased social media use to be a symptom of excess “free time” and the fact that “university is not as structured as […] other years of schooling.”
Zahra Lokwa, a second-year student in the faculty of arts traced her earliest social media usage back to the age of nine, with her consistent usage increasing greatly at the age of 13. Now, Lokwa attributes a decrease in her attention span to her heavy social media usage. Like Ali, she believed that an increase in “free time” as well as a lack of involvement in extracurriculars in her adolescence has caused her to form a social media dependency.
In an attempt to mitigate the physical and cognitive effects she believed were linked to her social media usage, Lokwa took a two-year break from social media at the age of 18.
“I found myself reading again, painting again,” she recalled. “I found myself to be sleeping earlier and having a good amount of sleep,” she added. Since returning to social media and devoting her free time during the day and at night to social media, she’s “back worse than ever.”
The adolescent years are known to be highly formative. However, university students’ experiences suggest social media may also shape the cognition of older teens and young adults, potentially influencing skills they have already developed. While research, including Nagata’s, focuses on adolescents, accounts from students reveal a need for further study on social media’s effects on an older age group, especially regarding perceived declines in focus and cognitive skills.
