A recent study found that social media can be harmful for the development of language skills in kids. The data showed that children under the age of 16 who use social apps regularly often struggle with the recognition and pronunciation of full words, among other challenges.
At the same time, the research also showed that social media usage has certain cognitive benefits in regards to knowledge-based and executive capacities.
The insights are based on an adolescent brain cognitive development study, published in the Journal of Research on Adolescence, which incorporates insights from more than 10,000 children as young as 10 years old, over a six year period.
The researchers found that frequent social media use was linked to struggles with reading and vocabulary across four years.
As per the report: “Our results highlight that while youth generally gain in both knowledge-based and executive capacities, social media growth was robustly coupled with hindered improvement in crystallized abilities.”
Crystallized abilities in this respect refer to “skills acquired from one’s environment,” including factual knowledge, verbal abilities, cultural competencies and reading comprehension.
In other words, children who spend more time on social media consequently spend less time in in-person social environments or reading books and other sources. As a result, they’re not as aligned with common verbal and cultural capacities. Reading comprehension is evidently impacted by alternate use of language, including abbreviations, in social media discussion.
Though on the positive side, kids who are active on social media often have improved data processing capacity, and are more in touch with a wider scope of information, per the research.
This data also suggests that social media platforms could exacerbate the challenges for disadvantaged youth, because this group “tends to use more screens than wealthier peers.” As such, disadvantaged youth may experience an outsized impact, “contributing to a further widening academic achievement gap based on socioeconomic status,” per the report.
The report’s authors suggested that parents should look to encourage engagement with content beyond social media apps in order to counter potential impacts. “For parents and professionals, emphasizing exposure to more advanced language content and encouraging moderation in social media behavior in the youth under their care may be beneficial for maintaining desired trajectories in crystallized and inhibition/attentional capacities growth,” the study said.
In other words, social media should not be the only content that kids are reading, and they should be encouraged to expand their social inputs beyond abbreviated comments beneath TikTok clips.
That, at least in theory, could help to counter the impacts of prolonged exposure to internet slang, which can have a negative impact on comprehension.
This research once again highlights the challenge in assessing the full impact of social media on young users, and the pros and cons of restricting kids from using social media apps.
Many have argued that banning teens from social apps won’t address the problems associated with harmful exposure and perceived cognitive impacts, because kids will simply shift to another social or connective platform as soon as certain apps and tools are banned. These arguments say the only real way to enforce bans is through app-level restrictions.
At the same time, the general perception within society is that social media is bad for teens’ mental health, with various reports suggesting that the performative nature of social media leads to harmful comparison, among other concerns.
This recent report provides another range of considerations within that broader argument. Meanwhile, another recent teen social media usage report from Pew Research indicated that teens themselves find social media to be a valuable form of connection, providing important interactive and social benefits.
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