Media use and brain development during adolescence

Abstract

The current generation of adolescents grows up in a media-saturated world. However, it is unclear how media influences the maturational trajectories of brain regions involved in social interactions. Here we review the neural development in adolescence and show how neuroscience can provide a deeper understanding of developmental sensitivities related to adolescents' media use. We argue that adolescents are highly sensitive to acceptance and rejection through social media, and that their heightened emotional sensitivity and protracted development of reflective processing and cognitive control may make them specifically reactive to emotion-arousing media. This review illustrates how neuroscience may help understand the mutual influence of media and peers on adolescents' well-being and opinion formation.

Fig. 1

Longitudinal changes in brain structure across adolescence (ages 8–30). a Consistent patterns of change across four independent longitudinal samples (391 participants, 852 scans), with increases in cerebral white matter volume and decreases in cortical grey matter volume (adapted from Mills et al., 2016, NeuroImage). b Of the two main components of cortical volume, surface area and thickness, thinning across ages 8 to 25 years is the main contributor to volume reduction across adolescence, here displayed in the Braintime sample (209 participants, 418 scans). Displayed are regional differences in annual percentage change (APC) across the whole brain, the more the color changes in the direction of green to blue, the larger the annual decrease in volume (adapted from Tamnes et al., 2017, J Neuroscience)

Fig. 2

Adolescents’ expectations and adjustments of being liked and liking others. Social evaluation study in which participants between ages 10 and 23 years rated other peers on whether they liked the other person, whether they believed the other would like them, and a post scan rating of liking the other person after having received acceptance or rejection feedback from the other person. The faces used in this adaptation of figure are cartoon approximations of the original stimuli used in ref. ; to see the original stimuli, please refer to ref. . The left graph shows that adolescents expect least to be liked by the other before receiving feedback (question B). The right graph shows a developmental increase in distinguishing between liking and disliking based on feedback from the other person (question D). (Adapted with permission from Rodman, 2017, PNAS)

Fig. 3

Longitudinal neural developmental pattern of reward activity in adolescence. Longitudinal two-wave neural developmental pattern of nucleus accumbens activation during winning vs. losing, based on 249, and 238 participants who were included on the first and second time point, respectively (leading to 487 included brain scans in total). A quadratic pattern of brain activity was observed in the nucleus accumbens for the contrast winning > losing money in a gambling task, with highest reward activity in mid-adolescence. (Adapted with permission from Braams et al.)

Fig. 4

The Body Image Paradigm to study combined media and peer influence. This paradigm is designed for experiments to study the influence of peers on body image perception. a Participants are presented with a bikini model, and they can make a judgment whether the model is too thin or of normal weight. Their response appears on the left side of the model. Then, they are presented with ostensible peer feedback (the peer norm). b When this feedback deviates from their own judgment, this is associated with increased activity in dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC) and bilateral insula, regions often implicated in processing norm violations. c Responses are larger for participants with lower self-esteem (Adapted from Van der Meulen et al.)