Consider it a warning parents won’t want to scroll past. New data has pointed to what many already feared — social media is hurting kids’ brains.
A study out of the UC San Francisco showed that children who spend more time on the apps scored lower on reading, vocabulary and memory tests. And their performance only slipped the more they scrolled.
Researchers mined the data of more than 6,000 children, ages 9 to 11, who are part of the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study, which tracks social media use among other factors.
The children were split into three groups based on how their social media habits evolved over time.
One group used little to no social media, while the second started with low use but reached about an hour a day by the time they turned 13. The final grou