It’s a question as frustrating as a hangnail, asked virtually every time I give a public lecture on teen brain development. It’s some form of: “is the digital world bad for the adolescent brain?”
In my most recent book “Attack of the Teenage Brain,” I give an example of papers from two separate research groups examining video games and attentional states. Their findings reveal how not-ready-for-prime-time our answers are.
Social media, contrary to its reputation, actually seems to improve certain prosocial behaviors—empathy, to name one—in teenage populations. Researchers in one study followed a group of 10-14-year-olds for a year, tracking their use of use social media, primarily Twitter and Facebook. The experimental design was good old pre/post, using the AMES assay (Adolescent Measure of Empathy and Sympathy), a well-regarded empathy test. Scores actually improved the more the kids used social media. Said the researchers:
“…adolescents’ social media use improved both their ability to understand (cognitive empathy) and share the feelings of their peers (affective empathy).”
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