It’s no secret that social media use can change adult brain anatomy, but a new study suggests that it may impact the developing brains of adolescents in profound ways as well.
Researchers from the University of North Carolina have found, in one of the first studies of its kind, that habitually checking social feeds may change the ways early adolescents process social rewards and punishments — changes concrete enough that they can be seen as distinct and divergent neural pathways in brain scans.
Published in the Journal of the American Medical Association Pediatrics, the paper found significant changes to the amygdala, the bit of grey matter in the brain associated with memory and emotions, in the brains of the 169 tween study participants from a rural North Carolina middle school.
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