Long-term impact of digital media on brain development in children

Samson Nivins; Bruno Sauce; Magnus Liebherr; Nicholas Judd; Torkel Klingberg

doi:10.1038/s41598-024-63566-y

Long-term impact of digital media on brain development in children

Samson Nivins^*, Bruno Sauce, Magnus Liebherr, Nicholas Judd, Torkel Klingberg^*

^*Corresponding author for this work

Biological Psychology

Research output: Contribution to Journal › Article › Academic › peer-review

Abstract

Digital media (DM) takes an increasingly large part of children’s time, yet the long-term effect on brain development remains unclear. We investigated how individual effects of DM use (i.e., using social media, playing video games, or watching television/videos) on the development of the cortex (i.e., global cortical surface area), striatum, and cerebellum in children over 4 years, accounting for both socioeconomic status and genetic predisposition. We used a prospective, multicentre, longitudinal cohort of children from the Adolescent Brain and Cognitive Development Study, aged 9.9 years when entering the study, and who were followed for 4 years. Annually, children reported their DM usage through the Youth Screen Time Survey and underwent brain magnetic resonance imaging scans every 2 years. Quadratic-mixed effect modelling was used to investigate the relationship between individual DM usage and brain development. We found that individual DM usage did not alter the development of cortex or striatum volumes. However, high social media usage was associated with a statistically significant change in the developmental trajectory of cerebellum volumes, and the accumulated effect of high-vs-low social media users on cerebellum volumes over 4 years was only β = − 0.03, which was considered insignificant. Nevertheless, the developmental trend for heavy social media users was accelerated at later time points. This calls for further studies and longer follow-ups on the impact of social media on brain development.

Original language	English
Article number	13030
Pages (from-to)	1-14
Number of pages	14
Journal	Scientific Reports
Volume	14
Early online date	6 Jun 2024
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-024-63566-y
Publication status	Published - 2024

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© The Author(s) 2024.

Funding

Open access funding provided by Karolinska Institute. This study was supported by the Swedish Research Council to Torkel Klingberg. Data used in the preparation of this article were obtained from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study (https://abcdstudy.org), held in the NIMH Data Archive (NDA). The ABCD study was supported by the National Institutes of Health and additional federal partners under Award Nos. U01DA041022, U01DA041025, U01DA041028, U01DA041048, U01DA041089, U01DA041093, U01DA041106, U01DA041117, U01DA041120, U01DA041134, U01DA041148, U01DA041156, U01DA041174, U24DA041123, and U24DA041147. A full list of supporters is available at\u00A0https://abcdstudy.org/?s=nIH+collaborators. A listing of participating sites and a complete listing of the study investigators can be found at\u00A0https://abcdstudy.org/principal-investigators.html. The ABCD consortium investigators designed and implemented the study and/or provided data but did not necessarily participate in the analysis or writing of this report. This manuscript reflects the views of the authors and may not reflect the opinions or views of the NIH or ABCD consortium investigators. Data used in the preparation of this article were obtained from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study ( https://abcdstudy.org ), held in the NIMH Data Archive (NDA). The ABCD study was supported by the National Institutes of Health and additional federal partners under Award Nos. U01DA041022, U01DA041025, U01DA041028, U01DA041048, U01DA041089, U01DA041093, U01DA041106, U01DA041117, U01DA041120, U01DA041134, U01DA041148, U01DA041156, U01DA041174, U24DA041123, and U24DA041147. A full list of supporters is available at https://abcdstudy.org/?s=nIH+collaborators . A listing of participating sites and a complete listing of the study investigators can be found at https://abcdstudy.org/principal-investigators.html . The ABCD consortium investigators designed and implemented the study and/or provided data but did not necessarily participate in the analysis or writing of this report. This manuscript reflects the views of the authors and may not reflect the opinions or views of the NIH or ABCD consortium investigators.

Funders	Funder number
Vetenskapsrådet
National Institute of Mental Health
National Institutes of Health	U01DA041106, U01DA041117, U01DA041028, U24DA041147, U01DA041148, U01DA041048, U24DA041123, U01DA041025, U01DA041156, U01DA041134, U01DA041089, U01DA041022, U01DA041120, U01DA041174, U01DA041093

Keywords

Brain
Children
MRI
Polygenic scores
Social media
Videogames

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abstract = "Digital media (DM) takes an increasingly large part of children{\textquoteright}s time, yet the long-term effect on brain development remains unclear. We investigated how individual effects of DM use (i.e., using social media, playing video games, or watching television/videos) on the development of the cortex (i.e., global cortical surface area), striatum, and cerebellum in children over 4 years, accounting for both socioeconomic status and genetic predisposition. We used a prospective, multicentre, longitudinal cohort of children from the Adolescent Brain and Cognitive Development Study, aged 9.9 years when entering the study, and who were followed for 4 years. Annually, children reported their DM usage through the Youth Screen Time Survey and underwent brain magnetic resonance imaging scans every 2 years. Quadratic-mixed effect modelling was used to investigate the relationship between individual DM usage and brain development. We found that individual DM usage did not alter the development of cortex or striatum volumes. However, high social media usage was associated with a statistically significant change in the developmental trajectory of cerebellum volumes, and the accumulated effect of high-vs-low social media users on cerebellum volumes over 4 years was only β = − 0.03, which was considered insignificant. Nevertheless, the developmental trend for heavy social media users was accelerated at later time points. This calls for further studies and longer follow-ups on the impact of social media on brain development.",

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Long-term impact of digital media on brain development in children

Abstract

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