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Digital Platforms Correlate With Cognitive Decline in Young Users (npr.org) 48

Posted by msmash from the likes-before-literacy dept.
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. A study published in JAMA examined data from over 6,000 children ages 9 to 10 through early adolescence. Researchers classified the children into three groups: 58% used little or no social media over several years, 37% started with low-level use but spent about an hour daily on social media by age 13, and 6% spent three or more hours daily by that age.

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.
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Digital Platforms Correlate With Cognitive Decline in Young Users More

Digital Platforms Correlate With Cognitive Decline in Young Users

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  • Reduced from Minutes to nanoseconds... Learned behavior through interaction with too many algorithms. Human See, Human Do. Unfortunately.

  • 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 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.

    • 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 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.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by skam240 ( 789197 )

        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.

        • I might be too old to speak on this with much authority, but my experience with today's youth is that they don't really watch "TV", at least not nearly as much as I did as a kid, or even as much as I do now. So I don't think it's the combination of social media + TV, because for many kids phones and YouTube/TikTok have replaced TV.

          I wonder if they account for reduced time actually reading books or studying. I mean, if someone spent all day working on the farm and never read a book I bet their reading and vo

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by skam240 ( 789197 )

            Not having kids myself I'm hardly an expert here either :) . I do agree with you in that I doubt they watch as much TV as kids used to, I just think that the TV watching that they are doing plus all the social media crap is likely keeping them in front of screens a lot longer then kids used to be kept in front of them. I certainly see plenty of shows on streaming services targeting the youth so I figure they still have to be watching at least a decent bit of traditional media otherwise they wouldn't be maki

      • The results from TV WERE apparent 50 years ago and people weren't spending every waking moment glued to them back then either.

    • The study does note that it's not controlling for this factor and recommends social media be looked at more closely. The question I suppose would be , is it Fortnite or Facebook (or whatever it is kids use now, Facebook has been considered "boomer" social media for some time now by the kids) responsible for this.

      That said , your observation on Gramps cursing the TV is interesting. As a kid in the 70s and 80s, my father was so adamant the TV was bad for it, he sold the TV set. The question is, what's the di

  • I imagine shitty parents are the reason, it just happens that that overlaps with allowing your child to be perpetually online.

    • 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.

    • Parents are perpetually at work in order to afford a house in a decent school district.

    • Sticking a kid in front of a screen is just lazy parenting. Instead, give the child some toys to play with to stimulate imagination. Read books with them to get them started so they can create images in their minds. Go outdoors with them and see what's going on out there. Dig a hole, make a homemade nature video. Go fishing or swimming in a lake. Ride a bicycle (not a stupid e bike).

  • 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:5, Informative)

      by TimothyHollins ( 4720957 ) on Tuesday October 14, 2025 @10:29AM (#65723842)

      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, Informative)

        by Orgasmatron ( 8103 )
        And because he is a fucking retard, his scapegoat is imaginary.

        Every graph of school spending looks like this [archive.is] or this [archive.is], a brutal reality that everyone who pays school taxes knows quite well.

  • Might just be correlation (Score:3)

    by RobinH ( 124750 ) on Tuesday October 14, 2025 @10:22AM (#65723824) Homepage
    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.

    • 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)

      by gweihir ( 88907 )

      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.

    • 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.

    • Not every parent is even aware of how harmful social media or constant smartphone access is for children.

      I believe there are some serious gaps in communicating the dangers and in potentially regulating harmful technology.

  • 10 year-olds with little or no social media exposure? Not in the U.S.!

  • 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

    • 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)

      by skam240 ( 789197 )

      Banning all social media would never make it past American free speech protections.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by gweihir ( 88907 )

      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.

  • 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:3)

      by gweihir ( 88907 )

      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.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by PPH ( 736903 )

      4) Knowing what sixty seven means.

      OK, that last one is a joke, but you get the idea.

      Damn you for making me Google it!

  • And if it is, in which direction? Until and unless we find that out _reliably_ all cries for things to happen are mindless nonsense.

    • Not really. If social media causes stupidity, kids should stop using social media, cuz it'll make them stupid.

      If stupid people use social media, kids should stop using social media, because it obviously isn't making them smarter, while other activities just might.

  • > 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.

  • Do you know what correlates with both? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Time.

    Decades ago the students were good and there were no digital platforms. Now the students are worse and there are platforms. Hmm, we can also correlate it with climate change, or the hairstyles in 80s and in the 20s.

  • This is discussed by Neil deGrasse Tyson, who is joined by Chuck Nice and Gary O’Reilly to explore the costs of growing up online and how to take back childhood with social psychologist and author of The Anxious Generation, Jonathan Haidt.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]

  • I recall that as a youth, I could remember a lot of phone numbers. Now, I can remember about three phone numbers. I suppose if all technology vanished, I would be screwed if I needed to remember a phone number. Of course, without the phone, what do I need the number for anyway?

    I would say it's more important to know how to find the information then to have it all memorized.

    There are of course examples that counter this statement. I do like that I memorized times tables and solidified them as facts in my min

  • Older ages like elders, adults, etc.

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