Internet Addiction Could Be Altering Your Teens’ Brain
Movieguide® Contributor
A recent study by The University College London found that internet addiction can do some serious damage to teens’ brains.
Internet addiction can cause “negative behavioural and developmental changes,” the study said.
“These changes could mean teenagers struggle to maintain relationships and social activities, and lie about online activity,” Tag24 News reported. “Teens addicted to the internet could also experience disrupted sleep and develop irregular eating patterns, the researchers said. It comes after experts found that internet addiction appears to alter the connections between the brain networks in teenagers.”
Movieguide® previously reported on the study:
CNN reported, “When participants clinically diagnosed with internet addiction engaged in activities governed by the brain’s executive function network — behaviors requiring attention, planning, decision-making and impulse control — those brain regions showed substantial disruption in their ability to work together, compared to those in peers without internet addiction. The authors think such signaling changes could suggest these behaviors can become more difficult to perform, potentially influencing development and well-being.”
Researchers looked at data from 12 studies in Korea, China and Indonesia that examined 237 youngsters aged 10 to 19 diagnosed with internet addiction.
“The issue has been defined by researchers as a person’s inability to resist the urge to use the internet which has negative effects on their psychological wellbeing as well as their social, academic and professional lives,” Tag24 said. “All of the youngsters involved in the study had brain scans to examine how the regions of the brain interact with each other — also known as functional connectivity — while they were resting and completing a task.”
“The studies that researchers reviewed for this paper all relied on magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to examine the functional connectivity of the brains of participants both at rest and during task performance — or, in this case, internet use,” Psychiatrist reported.
The researchers discovered that the study’s candidates had decreased functional connectivity in the areas of their brain that control active thinking.
“Academics said these changes can be linked to addictive behaviours as well as behaviour changes associated with intellectual ability, physical coordination, mental health and development,” News24 said.
“Given the influx of technology and media in the lives and education of children and adolescents, an increase in prevalence and focus on internet-related behavioural changes is imperative towards future children/adolescent mental health,” the study authors wrote.
The lead researcher, Max Chang, noted that teens’ brains are particularly vulnerable to internet addiction.
They are prone to “compulsive internet usage, cravings towards usage of the mouse or keyboard and consuming media,” he said. “The findings from our study show that this can lead to potentially negative behavioural and developmental changes that could impact the lives of adolescents. For example, they may struggle to maintain relationships and social activities, lie about online activity and experience irregular eating and disrupted sleep.”
Another author wrote that while the internet is useful for a variety of things, it becomes a big issue when it affects daily life.
“We would advise that young people enforce sensible time limits for their daily internet usage and ensure that they are aware of the psychological and social implications of spending too much time online,” she said.
Forbes reported, “Researchers caution that the use of fMRI scans to investigate internet addiction is limited, so the number of studies involving adolescents is relatively small. Most of the studies were carried out in Asia, and future research should compare results from Western countries, they add.”
