Too much screen time — particularly related to social media use in kids, teens and young adults — is a major concern in modern society. Smartphones are ubiquitous. Social media is enticing. And the impulse-control and decision-making capacities in young brains are not yet fully developed.
While social media addiction hasn’t been officially recognized as a mental health condition, it shows up in brain scans, according to Kylie Falcione, a graduate student in the Department of Communication and professor René Weber's Media Neuroscience Lab at UC Santa Barbara.
"The neural mechanism looks the same in the brain whether someone has a gaming disorder, is addicted to social media or gambling, or struggles with substance use," Falcione said.
In a recent gaming addiction study under review at the journal NeuroImage, Falcione and Weber found a pattern of reinforcement between gaming disorder and brain dysfunction within the reward system. This suggests that developing a gaming disorder changes how the brain processes rewards, creating a self-reinforcing cycle, she explained — brain dysfunction leads to hypersensitivity to rewards, which in turn increases disorder symptoms. Comparative imagery suggests that the same could hold true for social media addiction, as well.
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