Study: Addictive social media use impacts youth mental health
A new study has found that addictive use of technology such as social media, video games, or mobile phones is a factor in worsening mental health among preteens.
In the study, conducted by Columbia’s Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons and Weill Cornell Medicine, nearly 4,300 children’s social media use was examined over the course of four years, starting at age eight.
Addictive use of screens that interfered with school, home life, and other responsibilities, was common. Both high and increasingly addictive screen use was associated with anxiety, depression, or aggression, as well as suicidal behaviors and thoughts.
Over time, use patterns varied by screen type.
· Mobile phones: About half of participants reported high addictive use throughout the study, and about 25% showed increasingly addictive use as they aged.
· Social media: Approximately one-third of children had high or increasingly addictive use.
· Video games: Unlike social media and mobile phones, video game use did not show a distinct pattern of use over time, with only two trajectories, high and low use.
Based on the Columbia study’s participants’ agreement with statements like “I play video games so I can forget about my problems,” and “I feel the need to use social media apps more and more,” researchers identified addictive use patterns.
During the final year of the study, about 5% of participants exhibited suicidal behaviors, ranging from preparatory actions to suicide attempts. Children with high or increasingly addictive use patterns had a two to three times greater risk of suicidal behaviors. Total screen time was not associated with suicide-related or mental health outcomes.
Carmine DiChiara, Psy.D., a Newton, MA-based psychologist who has worked with both children and adults to treat internet and video game addiction, noted that
for some individuals, high levels of socializing through technology is engaging because of its regulated nature.
“One lasting pattern my colleagues and I have seen is that, particularly for children and adults who identify as or have been diagnosed as non-neurotypical, the defined structure of technology is comforting,” said DiChiara. “It’s engaging because it’s social and interesting, and yet it’s controllable, so you can choose when to pull out of the engagement.”
As time goes on, DiChiara predicts that the conversation of technology addiction will shift towards areas such as AI, and the concern that virtual engagement could interfere with forming relationships with people in the “real world.” DiChiara noted he has one 17-year-old client who says they talk with ChatGPT more than anyone, for companionship and advice.
“He makes a conscious effort to remind himself that ChatGPT is not a real person—he even reminds ChatGPT to emphasize that it is not a human being,” he said. “Interestingly, one of the things that bothers him is how it constantly agrees with him – it’s a behavior that’s been selected in the current large language models (LLMs) because it increases engagement. At the same time, ChatGPT is there for him so much more consistently throughout his week than I am and can probably respond more sympathetically to him due to its geniality training. Does our natural desire to connect mean that relating this way is “addictive,” if he finds it meaningful? My thought is no.”
Fears about the impact of technology on the development of youth is nothing new, DiChiara, said, noting that Socrates was once concerned that writing would ruin the development of memory and true understanding.
“It’s very easy to look back in hindsight and say his fears were unwarranted, when we’re presented with the fears of today that feel so palpable and clear,” he said. “My guess is that we’ll soon be concerned about people choosing to marry whatever nuanced AIs come around after the current generation of sophisticated sentence-completers we call LLMs, and social media use will feel like the good old days of heart-to-heart conversations with other human beings.”