Technology and social media: How is it really affecting your brain? – The Griffin Gazette
Technology and social media: How is it really affecting your brain? – The Griffin Gazette
Publish Date: 2026-04-21 14:35:00
Source Domain: lahsgriffingazette.com
LOS ALAMITOS, Calif. — Technology has impacted our lives in so many ways. Now, it is normal for people to be on their devices for most of the day. Even kids as young as two years old are being introduced to electronics such as tablets and smartphones. This behavior in our society has been shown to cause detrimental changes in our brains and our health.
According to pediatrician Michael Rich, director of the Center on Media and Child Health at Boston Children’s Hospital, the human brain is constantly forming neural connections, and screen stimulation can disrupt that process. Studies have also shown that sleep is essential to brain development, and using devices that emit blue light before bedtime can disrupt sleep patterns. Many teens often stay up texting or staring at screens in bed, not realizing that this is depriving them of the deep Rapid Eye Movement sleep that is essential for processing and storing information from the day.
“So even if they stay awake in algebra class, they may not remember what happened in class yesterday,” said Rich in a Harvard Medical School article.
Social media platforms such as Instagram, TikTok and YouTube thrive on adolescents staying on their platforms for extended periods of time. Since a young person’s brain lacks a fully developed self-control system, it is hard for them to stop their obsessive behavior, such as scrolling through many 30-second-long videos on these platforms. While these short-form videos, known as Reels on Instagram and Shorts on YouTube, may be extremely entertaining and easy to watch, they are also very damaging to one’s brain.
“There’s no substance that [students] are actually getting from watching those videos. There could be things that [they] potentially could learn, but there are so many things that are also negative that a student might see on social media that it’s almost as if it can impact their brain in terms of how they interpret information,” said Los…
