A new study released Monday from UCSF is sounding the alarm on social media use among kids. Researchers say even a little time online before age 13 could affect how well children read, learn and remember.

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A study conducted by researchers at UCSF has found a correlation between social media use among children under 13 and lower scores on cognitive tests, including reading, vocabulary, and memory. The study followed over 6,000 preteens and controlled for baseline cognitive performance, demographics, socioeconomic status, and region to isolate the impact of social media exposure.

Researchers focused on traditional social media platforms, such as TikTok, Instagram, and Snapchat, and excluded video games and television from their analysis. The findings suggest that even low levels of social media use are linked to declines in cognitive performance, though the study does not establish causation. The results come as many school districts consider or implement phone bans, highlighting the need for more research on the academic impacts of digital media.

Underage social media use linked to lower test scores, study finds

The study released this morning from UCSF is sounding the alarm on social media use among kids. Even researchers say even a little time online before age 13 could affect how well children read, learn, and remember. For more insight now, let's welcome lead author and UCSF pediatrics professor, Dr. Jason Nagata to the nine. Doctor, welcome. I'm a little concerned as a parent myself, obviously. I don't know how much is too much. Yeah. So this study followed over 6,000 preteens nine to 13 years old and found that even low levels of social media use was associated with lower scores on tests of reading, vocabulary, and memory. So overall components of cognitive performance. So this is, you know, obviously it's not causation, it's just correlation. Is there something else that the study, and I assume that they do due diligence to, you know, get out the confounding variables in this study. Could it be something else or is it just, you know, what is going on here? Yeah. Well, in the analysis, we did account for baseline cognitive performance. So this was changes in cognitive performance after age nine and then with new onset exposure to social media. We also accounted for demographic factors and socioeconomic status and region. So we did account for many other factors that could be contributing to cognitive performance. But this study, I think, is unique in that it does find a time ordering. So we did look at social media exposure first and then how that affects subsequent cognitive performance, even when controlling for what the kids, their cognitive performance levels at the beginning of the study. Are there levels to this? Is one type of social media worse than the other? What about video games, for example? Is that considered social media? In this study, we really focused on more traditional social media platforms like TikTok, Instagram, Snapchat. And we actually controlled for video games and television and other forms of media. So we were really focusing in on the social networking media platforms. But I do think it's an interesting question to see what other forms of media like video games have on cognitive performance. But I do think that they're different. Video game oftentimes is played by oneself and just the actions and the interactions are often different than they are on Instagram and Snapchat. All right. What about, you said cognitive decline. What about self-esteem? And is self-esteem related to cognitive decline? Yeah, I think that's a very important question. There's actually more research in general on social media and self-esteem and mental health. And generally, there have been some findings that have shown that social media use in teens is linked with poor body image, poor self-esteem, especially when you're constantly comparing yourself to sort of idealized bodies or portrayals of other teens that can be highly curated, that can make you feel like you're comparing yourself to an impossible standard. But actually, there's relatively less research up until now on school performance or cognitive performance, which I think is so important because so many school districts now are considering or implementing school phone bans. And I do think that there is more data that's needed in terms of cognitive and academic performance. So, you know, when people use Instagram, they still have to type out a message, right? You would think that, you know, the act of typing out messages that are readable to the public would help, at the very least help or not hurt, you know, English, for example. Well, I do think it depends on how people are using social media. I think while people who are posting may be posting some content, although I will say that a lot of the stuff on TikTok and Instagram and Snapchat is more video or image-based, like the actual writing itself of the wording is not always as prominent. But a lot of people are actually just consuming social media, so they may not be posting at all. They might just be doom-scrolling and looking through other people's posts and also constantly sort of switching back and forth between platforms. So I do think that sort of the media multitasking can have implications for cognition. And also, just in this study, we did find that social media users, among those kids who are using social media, the lower group was about an hour a day. The higher group was actually three or more hours a day. And when you're spending several hours a day on social media, that is time that's not being used, say, reading, doing homework, or even sleeping. And all those things can be really important for academic performance. Okay, doctor. These are important findings. Thank you for joining us. Dr. Jason Nagata from UCSF, thanks again. Thank you for having me.

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