Youngsters’ social media habit has developmental impact, researcher says
A few months ago, Marketplace’s Stephanie Hughes was talking with a bunch of high schoolers in Oklahoma City. She asked them how much time they spent on social media.
The answers varied from two hours a day to 15. One teenager, Ariana Gutierrez, told Stephanie that once you’re online, it can be hard to get off. “They’re like, oh, bro, just log off. Like, log off,” she said. “It’s not that easy, especially if you’re a person that really takes into consideration what other people are saying.”
Social media takes up a huge chunk of kids’ lives. A 2024 study from Pew found that nearly half of U.S. teenagers are online “almost constantly.” It’s a big source of stress for parents too, and policing their kids’ activities on these platforms can take up a lot of time and energy.
Also, there’s artificial intelligence, which often shows up on social media as bots that are always available to talk.
We’re going to explore all of that this week in our new series about what it’s like to be a kid on social media along with the risks and rules that come with it. We call it “The Infinite Scroll.”
We’re kicking things off with Eva Telzer, a professor of neuroscience and psychology at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Telzer told Stephanie about the intensity of youngsters’ connection to their phones and its effects on how the kids are wired, which may last into adulthood. The following is an edited transcript of their conversation.
Eva Telzer: Adolescents are really glued to their phones around the clock. When they’re in their bedrooms at night, they’re on their phone. Throughout the school day, adolescents are on their phones. Adolescents are connecting to their peers on social media, so it has really changed the landscape of adolescent development in a way that their whole lives are unfolding and happening on these digital platforms.
Stephanie Hughes: And what’s your sense of what they’re on, how long they’re on? What does it look like for them?
Telzer: So in our own research, we’ve collected data from teens to try to capture what they’re doing and how long they’re on their phones, how they’re navigating these social media environments. And when we collect not just what adolescents tell us, but more objective measures directly from their phones, we can see that on average, adolescents are on their phones eight or more hours a day, with some adolescents on their phones upwards of 16 or more hours a day. They’re also constantly checking their phones, checking for notifications and updates on social media. Adolescents are looking at their phones hundreds of times a day. So in addition to just being constantly on their phones and looking at social media, they’re habitually checking their phones, looking for updates, seeing what they might be missing out on.
Hughes: I was with this group of kids, and I was like, “How is this possible, like, you’re with us?” And then I realized that while they were with us, they were also on their phones. And so it’s kind of just another presence in the room.
Telzer: Yeah. There’s this phrase called phubbing, where you’re essentially in the presence of other people but on your phone. So you’re sort of snubbing on your phone.
Hughes: Phubbing, so like, p-h-u-b?
Telzer: Exactly.
Hughes: Do you think they do it consciously, or is it just something they do, or a combination?
Telzer: I think it’s partly unconscious. I think that they often don’t even realize that they are reaching for their phones. It is just a subconscious, automatic behavior that they engage in. In a way, they feel uncomfortable if they aren’t attached to their phones and on social media. Even in their peer interactions, they’re constantly taking pictures and uploading that onto social media in the moment or putting those real-life social interactions onto their online platforms.
Hughes: Now, you’ve done some research on how checking social media can affect middle schoolers’ brains. Tell me what you found.
Telzer: We found that those adolescents who are habitually checking their social media accounts are showing increases in brain activation in areas of the brain that respond to salient peer and reward context. These regions are becoming hypersensitive. They are becoming more and more and more activated over the following three years.
Hughes: Got it. So basically if kids are used to checking social media, they become more sensitive to feedback from their peers?
Telzer: Exactly, yeah. So in a way, the social media is exacerbating an already sensitive brain.
Hughes: What do you think could be the consequences of this in both the short and long term?
Telzer: We think, on the one hand, that potentially the brain is changing in a way that’s adapting to its digital world. Adolescents are constantly on their phones and on social media, and the brain is becoming sensitive to the cues that are surrounding adolescents, so it may be helping them to navigate those digital environments. But what is probably more likely is that it is increasing adolescents’ sensitivity to these social cues, creating what we call this sort of feedback loop that sucks them into those social media environments even more, makes them more sensitive to it, potentially creating a greater need to be on social media, greater sensitivity to social feedback, whether that is rewards or punishments that may have downstream impacts on their well-being as they become young adults, potentially leading to social anxiety or downstream effects on depression or loneliness.
Hughes: What’s your sense of what this means for the companies behind these social media apps to be in these kids’ lives when they are developing at a rapid clip?
Telzer: Yeah, that’s a hard question. There’s a lot of things built into the platforms that make the social media environment especially vulnerable for adolescents. Many of the features of social media applications, whether it is the “like” feature on there that’s feeding them some rewards, or the ability for endless scrolling, or some of the algorithms that take advantage of the things that they like and show them more and more of that, create this greater engagement on the platforms. Some of those features, I think, are going to increase adolescents’ likelihood to be on social media, probably increase their habitual social media use, which will lead to some of these changes in the brain that we’re talking about.
Hughes: Are they forming habits for life here at this age?
Telzer: Absolutely. The brain is changing during adolescence in a way that prepares it to be an adult. And so if the brain is changing and then after adolescence, the brain is less plastic, it’s sort of set in its ways. The changes that we’re seeing during adolescence really will have long-term implications into adulthood.
Hughes: So one of the Oklahoma City high schoolers I talked to, 14-year-old Ariana Gutierrez, she said it’s hard to avoid being online.
Ariana Gutierrez: A lot of people are like, oh my gosh, like, get outside, touch grass or something like that. They don’t realize that we’re the type of generation that grew up with iPads, phones and computers to do work. Like, that’s basically what we do at school all day.
Hughes: How do kids navigate this?
Telzer: I think it’s very challenging for children and adolescents to navigate their increasingly digital worlds. On the one hand, most of their peer interactions are happening online, so to tell them to get offline means oftentimes not being connected to their peers. Sometimes their homework and schoolwork is happening behind a screen, and they’ve grown up in this, in this digital world. So I think adolescents, while they may tell us that they want to be online, actually want to be given some help and structure to get off. We teach an undergraduate class here at UNC called Psych 180. It’s a whole class about digital media and adolescents and brain development. And we ask [students] to reflect on their adolescence, and they say looking back that they wished that their parents or others had not let them on social media so early and had given them a little more sort of structure to stay off because they have a hard time making those decisions themselves, and so really providing some structure from adults, whether that’s parents or teachers, to help them is, I think, going to be very helpful for the youth.
Hughes: Yeah, later in the week, we’re going to hear from a parent that I was talking to, and she mentioned they have pretty strict rules around phones. Their kids weren’t allowed to get them until they were in eighth grade. And she said it led to settings where one of her kids would be at a friend’s house. There’d be a bunch of kids, they’d all be on their phones, except for her kid, and so the kid would be left out because they weren’t able to phub — I guess there was group phubbing. And I think it is really hard to navigate. Parents are put in these really hard situations where they have to figure out how they move forward.
Telzer: Yeah. In a way, parents need to mobilize together. And also, parents’ behaviors matter a lot too. A lot of parents’ own technology use is going to impact their children as well. So parents are oftentimes phubbing their own children behind their phones, and so navigating that as a parent too, and making sure that we as adults and parents are checking ourselves as well.
Hughes: I want to ask, there’s also been some research on social media addiction among adolescents. Can you tell me what “addiction” means in this sense, and what it means for kids?
Telzer: So we think of this more as like problematic social media use. So at the point at which social media use is interfering with your daily activities, whether that is interfering with your sleep or your homework or other daily behaviors that you need to be engaging in — when you start craving it, when you can’t have it, when you go out of your way to have social media when you otherwise couldn’t — these are signs that the social media has gotten to a point of being problematic. And a majority of adolescents are showing signs that they are engaging in problematic social media use.
Hughes: Given all that, what advice would you give to a teenager?
Telzer: It is a hard landscape right now to navigate. Social media, on the one hand, connects adolescents to their peers. For some adolescents, it provides them with a safe space where they otherwise may not have access to a sense of community. But on the other hand, it is very stressful. Our teens are reporting high levels of what we call digital stress. This is a sense of both FOMO, this fear of missing out, this need to be connected around the clock. And the advice — it’s very tricky and hard, but I think one of the most concrete pieces of advice that we can implement is to stay off of social media and tech at night. Sleep is so important for adolescents when it comes to their mental well-being, their academic achievement, their ability to regulate their emotions. So of all of the things we need to do, staying off at night will have one of the biggest effects on their well-being.
Hughes: As a researcher, if you were to imagine a law that would help with this, what might that look like?
Telzer: I think that there’s many features of social media that are just unhealthy for adolescents, and our laws need to make some of those features not possible for adolescents to be exposed to. Those, I think, will be the hardest laws to implement. The easier ones, of course, are something like an age restriction or other aspects just to keep them completely off. But I really think that the laws need to make the social media platforms themselves a safer space for adolescents.
If you or someone you know is struggling with online harassment or cyberbullying that has resulted in mental health matters or suicidal thoughts, please call or text the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline, or visit the 988 Lifeline website.
Stories You Might Like
The future of this podcast starts with you.
Every day, the “Marketplace Tech” team demystifies the digital economy with stories that explore more than just Big Tech. We’re committed to covering topics that matter to you and the world around us, diving deep into how technology intersects with climate change, inequity, and disinformation.
As part of a nonprofit newsroom, we’re counting on listeners like you to keep this public service paywall-free and available to all.
Support “Marketplace Tech” in any amount today and become a partner in our mission.
