Researchers Study Effects Of Social Media On Young Minds

NPR:

So if you’re freaking out because you think social media is running your life, I recommend that you do not listen to the next four minutes or so of radio. My colleague, social science correspondent Shankar Vedantam, is here to talk about the effects that social media has on our brains. Hi, Shankar.

SHANKAR VEDANTAM, BYLINE: Hi, David.

GREENE: Is this bad news you’re about to give me?

VEDANTAM: You know, it depends on your point of view.

GREENE: All right.

VEDANTAM: Researchers took teenagers, stuck them in the brain scanner and observed them as they engaged with social media. Lauren Sherman – she’s a researcher at UCLA – she told me that she and her colleagues wanted to analyze the effects that social media has on young minds. They had the intuition that, besides all the conversations that happen on social media, there was something about mediums like Twitter and Instagram that was qualitatively different than interactions in the physical world.

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