Life & Style H E A LT H
Social Media Toxins
A study at Tulsa’s Laureate Institute for Brain Research explores the link between mental health and screen time.
W
hether social media and excessive screen time create mental illness is murky. Many factors contribute to poor mental health, and researchers at the Laureate Institute for Brain Research in Tulsa aim to find
answers. The Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development study, started in 2016, observes how the brains of 10,000 children, ages 9-11, develop over the next 10 years. Florence Breslin, co-investigator of the study, says there are no cut-and-dry answers. “The story is a lot messier than we think it is,” she says. “Studies like [this], where we can watch kids over time and see how they’re changing, see how their screen activity differs, will give us more answers.” Breslin says research suggests that social media adversely affects mental health, but it’s akin to a chicken-and-egg scenario; it’s undecided if people with mental illness use social media because of their problems or if social media causes disorders like anxiety and depression. “There is data showing negative associations … and then other studies that don’t show negative associations,” she says. “The big question is what came first.” News media have raised this topic for some time, but the scientific community has just started to research it. “In the next year or two, we’ll see a real shift in our scientific knowledge of it, but right now we’re early,” Breslin says. “We know almost no causality.” Breslin says her study’s data looks a little different than current
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OKLAHOMA MAGAZINE | FEBRUARY 2019
