Digital Platforms Correlate With Cognitive Decline in Young Users (npr.org)
- Reference: 0179776406
- News link: https://news.slashdot.org/story/25/10/14/0643226/digital-platforms-correlate-with-cognitive-decline-in-young-users
- Source link: https://www.npr.org/sections/shots-health-news/2025/10/13/nx-s1-5571050/social-media-teens-brains-reading-memory
Even low users who spent about one hour per day performed 1 to 2 points lower on reading and memory tasks compared to non-users. High users performed 4 to 5 points lower than non-social media users. Jason Nagata, a pediatrician at the University of California, San Francisco and study author, said the findings were notable because even modest social media use correlated with lower cognitive scores.
[1] https://www.npr.org/sections/shots-health-news/2025/10/13/nx-s1-5571050/social-media-teens-brains-reading-memory
[2] https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/10.1001/jama.2025.16613?guestAccessKey=c8bce59a-f799-4c36-817e-dd2c05cf6ae4
Probably Correct (Score:2)
It's probably correct. Anecdotally, I feel much stoopidder after spending any time on social media. Yes, including Slashdot.
But, I am wondering if this doesn't tie into an [1]earlier story [slashdot.org] about screen use and academic performance. That is to say; is the issue social media or is it screen use in general?
Gramps always called TV the boob(moron) tube and the idiot box. Perhaps science is closing in on the confirmation.
[1] https://mobile.slashdot.org/story/25/10/11/0036214/more-screen-time-linked-to-lower-test-scores-for-elementary-students
Re: (Score:1)
> It's probably correct. Anecdotally, I feel much stoopidder after spending any time on social media. Yes, including Slashdot.
> But, I am wondering if this doesn't tie into an [1]earlier story [slashdot.org] about screen use and academic performance. That is to say; is the issue social media or is it screen use in general?
> Gramps always called TV the boob(moron) tube and the idiot box. Perhaps science is closing in on the confirmation.
TV has been around for a long time. These results would be apparent much earlier were it the case that *only* screen time in general was the problem.
With that said, excessive use of quick and easy entertainment has been established as an issue, including TV and computers.
The results here show that social media is significantly worse than TV and will breed a generation or three of Trump voters.
[1] https://mobile.slashdot.org/story/25/10/11/0036214/more-screen-time-linked-to-lower-test-scores-for-elementary-students
Re: (Score:2)
> The results here show that social media is significantly worse than TV...
I would suspect both social media and TV have an effect and that the two together are what are causing our current problems. Social media just tipped the problem into more noticeable territory as it comes in addition to watching TV. It's not like watching most TV requires much intellectual activity, it's a pretty passive activity.
Re: (Score:1)
The results from TV WERE apparent 50 years ago and people weren't spending every waking moment glued to them back then either.
Shit parents (Score:2)
I imagine shitty parents are the reason, it just happens that that overlaps with allowing your child to be perpetually online.
Re: (Score:1)
> I imagine shitty parents are the reason, it just happens that that overlaps with allowing your child to be perpetually online.
That would not explain the low-level use group, which also saw a decline in cognitive performance.
Again we said the same thing about TV (Score:1)
And the actual problem is that overworked parents who don't get to spend a lot of time raising their kids combined with underfunded schools that can't pick up the slack from those overworked parents is the problem.
I'm not surprised it's worse. We have been cutting funding to schools for ages in order to move that money into very expensive private schools and subsidies for the rich assholes that send their kids to them. AKA School vouchers.
So a lot of the programs that were around when I was a kid th
Re:Again we said the same thing about TV (Score:4, Interesting)
> And the actual problem is that overworked parents who don't get to spend a lot of time raising their kids combined with underfunded schools that can't pick up the slack from those overworked parents is the problem.
> I'm not surprised it's worse. We have been cutting funding to schools for ages in order to move that money into very expensive private schools and subsidies for the rich assholes that send their kids to them. AKA School vouchers.
> So a lot of the programs that were around when I was a kid that would pick up some of the slack are long gone. Those were the first to go because you could argue that it wasn't core curriculum.
> But it's a lot easier to blame the kids and those dastardly screens than it is to actually do anything. Feels better too.
No. from a quick RTFS:
"Multiple linear regression analyses with robust standard errors estimated the association between social media trajectories and year 2 cognitive performance scores (5 subtests and composite). Models adjusted for baseline variables including age, sex, race and ethnicity, household income, parent education, attention-deficit/hyperactivity symptoms, depression symptoms, respective baseline cognitive score, other screen time, and study site."
I think you are the one that is too quick to blame your favorite scapegoat.
Re: (Score:2)
While that sounds impressive, it actually says a lot less than you seem to think.
Might just be correlation (Score:2)
It could just be that parents, like us, who worked hard to keep our kids off social media until they were in high school, are just higher achieving, and passed those same traits on to our kids. They didn't randomly assign kids to this trial. Still, that doesn't mean there's no causation here. Social media is terrible, and I deleting my social media accounts over a decade ago and haven't looked back.
Re: (Score:1)
> It could just be that parents, like us, who worked hard to keep our kids off social media until they were in high school, are just higher achieving, and passed those same traits on to our kids. They didn't randomly assign kids to this trial. Still, that doesn't mean there's no causation here. Social media is terrible, and I deleting my social media accounts over a decade ago and haven't looked back.
And the study adjusted for the factors that you mentioned, so they cannot be the reason.
Re: (Score:2)
Indeed. And it may well be something else that causes both. Like a general, not "social-media caused" decline of the respect for Science and education, for example and religious extremism raising its ugly anti-rationality head again.
This needs a lot more insight before we even can begin to address the problem in ways that work.
Re: (Score:2)
I agree that there is likely a lot of correlation going on here.
The people who watch Love Island tiktoks and the people who watch 2hr Asionometry documentaries on semiconductor fabrication are not the same group. You're not going to turn one group into the other by simply exposing them to the material from childhood.
Where did they find these kids? (Score:2)
10 year-olds with little or no social media exposure? Not in the U.S.!
It is time (Score:1)
This report together with our worsening social climate in many aspects do point to a clear and desperately needed conclusion - ban all social media across the west. It doesn't do us any favors, and we aren't biologically designed to handle this type of social setting. If that is impossible, dumb social media functionality down to a more blunt instrument, like it was in the past. BBS contacts, emails to a single person, SMS/text messages to a single person; anything that behaves similar to communication betw
Re: (Score:2)
Yup. Just look at this sentence:
> That means that two, three, five years from now, we might be talking about some very significant gaps between kids who might have been heavy users or not as heavy users.
There's already other things where we try and prevent kids from becoming heavy users, the fact that in this case they're getting a hit electronically rather than from substances shouldn't make any difference.
Re: (Score:2)
Banning all social media would never make it past American free speech protections.
Re: (Score:1)
Age restrictions would since we already have them for damn near everything else.
Re: (Score:2)
Nothing is clear here. You are part of the problem though by trying to push "simple" solutions without valid scientific evidence. That never goes well.
Not just younger ones (Score:2)
IMO
And the reverse question? (Score:2)
How good are the kids that do not use social media at:
1) Identifying AI produced slop.
2) Identifying propaganda.
3) Knowing which social media are popular and which are catering to a dying audience.
4) Knowing what sixty seven means.
OK, that last one is a joke, but you get the idea.
People that use X more than Y will have more skills related to X than Y. And vice versa.
Frankly, I suspect that social media related skills may be more important ten years from now than the decline in their other skills.
Re: (Score:2)
Yes. Sure, there is some problem here. But which is it, actually? And what can be done? "Ban the evil satanic Internet" is just a really stupid knee-jerk reaction that will not fix anything and make things worse.
And there is a very real possibility that this has an entirely different cause as well.
But is it causation? (Score:2)
And if it is, in which direction? Until and unless we find that out _reliably_ all cries for things to happen are mindless nonsense.
And water is wet /s (Score:2)
Preteens who use increasing amounts of social media perform poorer in reading, vocabulary and memory tests in early adolescence compared to those who use little or no social media.
Attention span... (Score:2)
Reduced from Minutes to nanoseconds... Learned behavior through interaction with too many algorithms. Human See, Human Do. Unfortunately.