Social Media and its Hidden Effects
By Chhiring Sherpa, Lauren Bosch, and Jim Stellar
Three personal stories
Looking back, it’s almost impossible for me (CH) to remember a time before social media. When I started middle school in 2011, I already had a cell phone. I was constantly texting my friends, always checking to see if a new message had appeared in my inbox. Eventually, nearly everyone had Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat, where we would all constantly interact, post memes, and navigate online drama. Over time, we became fully entrenched in our online lives, as they began to directly shape and influence our real-world social circles.
Even now, checking social media has become second nature for a lot of us and it’s something we do without thinking. But what happens in the brain when that “quick scroll” turns into an hour? For many of us, this habit feels harmless, even relaxing as we wind down for bed or take a break from work. But what if that “quick scroll” is quietly reshaping the way our brains respond to attention, reward, and emotion? Social media is woven into our daily routines so seamlessly that we rarely stop to question how it affects us. Personally, I have also fallen guilty of ‘doomscrolling’ and ‘bedrotting’, watching reels and others posts on social media not realizing how much time has passed. Eventually, I began to notice that the more time I spent on platforms such as Instagram, TikTok, and Snapchat, the shorter my attention span became. I found myself reaching for my phone every five minutes, and over time, my mental health began to decline as I increasingly compared my life to others online.
My (LB) personal experience is similar. I remember joining social media around 2013. You had to be 13, but no one on these platforms was checking for age verification. Almost every person around my age has an experience of being exposed to something negative online when we were too young to know better. I am not even sure the majority of adults truly know what goes on on social media, or the corners of the internet kids are able to get to from their smartphone. The internet is still so unregulated,and anything done to control it seems to lose momentum after a few weeks. I would also argue that social media is much more addictive now, as I do not recall spending nearly as much time online as a teenager. The shift in content from long to short form along with the insane amount of ads seem to show that the shift is deliberate.
My (JS) childhood experience is very different. I do not mean to sound like a dinosaur, but we had no cell phones when I was growing up. We had no internet. My first experience with the internet was as an Assistant Professor in my late 20s at Harvard University when I was working on a scientific paper with my former PhD supervisor and we were exchanging paper drafts on our desktop computers on what I thought was a fax machine on my computer. All of a sudden, one day, a picture appeared on my screen. I did not know that as part of Harvard I was on ARPAnet, a forerunner of the internet. Needless to say our social interactions as kids, students, and now as colleagues were not on our phones and were much less accessible and much more direct. It was a happier time in some ways, although it was a limited and less free time. When Jonathan Haidt wrote his recent book, The Anxious Generation, it made sense to me. After all, there has not been any evolution in the human brain structure since I was a kid. Even though I love the accessibility to information that we all have in our hands and I appreciate our ability to use that information to work together such as on this blog online and over Zoom, we all also have to be careful.
What does this mean?
Experiences like these are not unique, nor are they accidental. Netflix’s documentary The Social Dilemma argues that social media platforms are intentionally designed to capture and hold users’ attention by exploiting the brain’s reward systems. Through interviews with former tech insiders, engineers, and researchers, the film reveals how features such as infinite scrolling, push notifications, and algorithmic recommendations are strategically engineered to encourage prolonged engagement and reinforce habitual use. As former Google design ethicist Tristan Harris explains, “If you’re not paying for the product, then you are the product,” highlighting how user attention is ultimately the commodity being sold to advertisers. When viewed through a neuroscientific lens, these design choices help explain why behaviors like doomscrolling feel so difficult to stop. By continuously providing small, unpredictable rewards, such as new content, likes, or notifications, these platforms activate dopamine-driven reward pathways in the brain, encouraging users to keep scrolling. Over time, this cycle can shape patterns of attention, emotional regulation, and well-being, allowing the effects of prolonged social media engagement to accumulate in ways that may negatively impact mental health.
There are increasing efforts to limit young people’s exposure to social media both locally and globally. In December, Australia introduced a social media ban that prevents individuals under the age of 16 from using certain platforms. The policy reflects growing concerns about how constant social media use may impact adolescents’ mental health, attention, and development. Other countries are considering similar measures, with governments in France, Spain, and Greece discussing policies that would restrict social media access for younger users. Efforts to address this issue are also happening closer to home. In New York, Governor Kathy Hochul recently announced a phone ban for public schools across the state in an effort to reduce distractions and limit students’ reliance on their devices during the school day. These types of policies show a growing awareness that adolescents’ brains are still developing, especially in areas related to impulse control, attention, and emotional regulation, which may make them more vulnerable to the addictive design of social media platforms.
Three personal interpretations
I (LB) was originally optimistic when I heard these stories. As someone who began using social media in 2012, I have seen what kids are exposed to on the internet. I have watched its content age alongside me, and I know the internet today is more dangerous than it ever has been. But my optimism faded when I began to really question the enforcement of these rules. One of the first articles that I found from Australia interviewed teenagers to discuss their experiences and opinions on the ban. “In the days leading up to the ban, Snapchat asked 14 year old Aydan to complete a face scan to prove he was over 16. The app confirmed his age to be over 16 just with this face scan, and he was granted access to TikTok as well. Instagram required a photo of his license, so he asked a friend who was over 16 (ABC, 2026). Teenagers in this article report initially feeling like the ban would be effective, but after a few days they realized it was useless.
After hearing what Australian teens thought about the ban, who better to ask about the NYS ban than a high school student? I called my brother, a 15 year old sophomore at a public school in Long Island, to ask him a couple questions about the phone ban. He told me that he feels it did nothing; if anything, it made the issue of phones somewhat worse. Before the ban, his school used phone cubbies which allowed the teachers to have eyes on the phone at all times. Now, kids are told they are watched on a camera and trusted to put their phones in their lockers. He told me that there are many kids who do not comply, and there are times that teachers who see students on their phones do not enforce the ban at all. He says that most staff do not enforce the ban strictly, and it is even more of a distraction.
Is there any setting in which a phone ban could be enforced without voluntary compliance? Is social media a Pandora’s Box? It seems that now that our society is exposed to this method of interaction, it is near impossible to get everyone to comply with going back to how things were before. Or maybe as the young people get younger, they are not able to remember a time before social media, and how can we ask them to go back when they have never been there? While I appreciate the initiative taken by our state as well as various nations across the globe, I think it is time to rethink the approach entirely.
To me (CS), phone bans and age restrictions are a start, but honestly, they don’t get to the root of the problem. The real issue is how these apps are built in the first place. Features like infinite scroll, autoplay videos, and personalized feeds aren’t just random design choices, they are specifically made to keep you on the app as long as possible. Think about it: when was the last time Instagram or TikTok gave you a natural stopping point? If we can have regulations on how food is labeled or how cars have to be built for safety, it doesn’t seem like a stretch to say that apps targeting kids should have to follow some basic design rules too. Things like a timer that asks if you want to keep scrolling, or turning off autoplay for younger users, could make a real difference without banning anything outright.
Another thing that could genuinely help is education. Not in a boring, outdated “don’t talk to strangers online” way, but actually teaching students how these platforms make money off of their attention. If you understand that every second you spend scrolling is literally generating revenue for a company, it changes the way you think about your own habits. It’s honestly surprising that this isn’t already being taught in schools. Understanding how an algorithm works, or why a notification is timed the way it is, could genuinely change the way students interact with these platforms.
One thing that honestly does not get brought up enough is how social media can actually make you feel more alone. Which sounds weird, right? You have hundreds of followers, people liking your posts, your DMs are full but something still feels off. And it turns out there is actually a lot of research that backs this up. A nine year study from Baylor University following nearly 7,000 adults found that both actively posting and passively scrolling on social media were linked to increased feelings of loneliness (Baylor University, 2025). When most of your social interaction is happening through likes and comments, you are not really building the same kind of connection as you would face to face. For teenagers especially, figuring out how to handle friendships, arguments, and emotions in real life is a huge part of growing up. When all of that starts happening over text instead, some of that growth just does not happen the same way. It is one of those harms that sneaks up on you because on the surface everything looks fine.
None of us are sitting here saying social media is the worst thing ever or that we want to throw our phones in the ocean. That would be pretty hypocritical considering how much we all rely on it, even just to write this blog. But there is a real difference between technology that genuinely makes your life easier and technology that is basically engineered to keep you scrolling forever. Fixing this is probably not going to come down to one thing. It is going to take better regulations, smarter education, and users becoming more aware of their own habits. The tobacco industry spent decades denying the harm their products caused before society finally demanded accountability. A lot of people are starting to think social media companies are heading toward that same kind of reckoning, and honestly, it is hard to argue with that.
I (JS) think my role in this blog is to comment as a neuroscientist, hopefully relevantly. So here goes. Even with rules and bans in place, it’s not surprising that social media use continues almost unabated since our brains are wired to seek the rewards these platforms provide. Social media taps into the brain’s dopamine-driven reward system, delivering unpredictable bursts of likes, comments, and new content that keep users engaged far longer than they intend. For adolescents in particular, the prefrontal cortex which is the part of the brain responsible for impulse control and long-term planning is still developing in adolescence, which research shows (even on laboratory rats) makes it harder to resist immediate rewards. In this context, bans or school phone policies address only the surface behavior; they cannot undo the underlying neurological pull that drives habitual scrolling. Essentially, the platforms are designed to be irresistible, and removing access temporarily is unlikely to change the patterns that have already formed. This suggests that if we want to truly help young people navigate social media responsibly, strategies may need to go beyond restriction and focus on digital literacy, self-awareness, and habit management, giving users the tools to understand and regulate their own engagement with these platforms.
One of the problems here comes from neuroscience and that is the neuroplasticity of the brain, particularly in the brain’s dopamine systems. We have all heard of the dopamine “hit” that supposedly comes from “doom scrolling” on Instagram or other social media. While the surges in dopamine in addiction are thought of mostly in the context of cocaine-taking where they can go way over normal levels and produce neuroplastic brain changes that drug dealers know well at a behavioral level in building their base of drug consumers, the question is can more repetitions of smaller “dopamine hits” also produce addictive behaviors. That answer seems to be “yes” and much has been written about the app developers designing their product to be one that generates more customer attention. Only recently has their been lawsuits on this topic about the deleterious effects of this form of addiction and there is much to say here, but for now, we only want to say that to us this phenomenon seems real, even if it is over-simplified and there is much we do not yet know about the brain’s reaction.
As a current graduate student pursuing a degree in mental health counseling, I (LB) am not a fan of AI nor social media. In an academic setting, both of these resources are used as a distraction from something that could be positively impacting your life. Students are distracted by social media during classtime, either actively scrolling or even just thinking about it. And they do not need to pay attention when they know they can get ChatGPT to do their homework. While I spoke previously about the cellphone ban in New York, I question its effectiveness if the students are able to go home and get their robot to finish their essay. I also question the future of my generation, and what the long term effects of this will be.
I (CS) this is something that is difficult to ignore in the data from Teens, Social Media and Mental Health is how much teen mental health has declined alongside the rise of social media. As Pew Research Center reports, “Roughly half of teens (48%) say these sites have a mostly negative effect on people their age, up from 32% in 2022” (2025). Anxiety and depression have become so normalized in our generation that it almost feels weird if someone does not struggle with it at some point. That was not always the case, and we think it is worth asking why things have changed so drastically. From my own experiences, the connection between social media and mental health feels very real. Whether it is the constant comparison to other people’s highlight reels, the pressure to get likes on a post, or just the general feeling of unease that comes from spending hours on your phone, something about the way these platforms are designed seems to wear you down over time. And the fact that this is happening to younger and younger kids makes it even more concerning. We are not talking about teenagers anymore, children who are barely in middle school are already navigating the pressures of online life before they even know who they are. What’s most worrisome is how normal all of this has become. Depression, anxiety, burnout: these are words that our generation throws around so casually now, almost like they are just part of growing up. But they should not be. And while I am not saying social media is entirely to blame, it is hard to look at how much things have changed since smartphones became a part of everyday life and not see a connection. The encouraging thing is that people our age are starting to wake up to this. More and more teenagers are admitting that social media makes them feel worse, and some are even trying to cut back on their own whether it’s through setting time limits or taking short breaks from social media platforms at times. That kind of self awareness highly matters but individual awareness can only go so far when the platforms themselves are still engineered to pull you back in every time you try to step away.
I (JS) see the influence of AI in my teaching. In my lecture classes I like to give essay questions. In the modern world I believe that I need to give those essay test questions in an on-line format where students can use their laptops to answer. Why? I want the students to be trying to master concepts, not test their recall for items they can easily look up. I teach the concepts, the students talk about them in little quizzes and in break-out groups. I try to set up an environment in our in-person meetings where the students feel challenged, but respected, in the spirit of us engaging in learning together even if I am the professor. So, I tell students they can use AI (how could I stop them), but I use the analogy of them letting AI ride in the side-car of their motorcycle, not drive. Never cut and paste. Just use the lecture slides, the textbook, your notes, Google look-ups, and AI to remind you of the facts. But write the essay yourself and own the words you put down. That is how I will grade your essay. If I think you copied from AI, I will ask you to a real-world or Zoom meeting to discuss the topic with me to make sure you really do own your words. But even still, I am noticing that the essays are getting better over the last few years. I also notice that I am using AI in my “motorcycle side-car.” Finally, the peer mentors in that course have launched an end-of-term survey of student use of AI that they will share and discuss with me after the grades are submitted.
Conclusion
At the end of the day, social media is not something we can just get rid of. It is a huge part of how we communicate and live our daily lives. But our experiences, along with the research, show that it is not just about how much we use it, it is also about how these platforms are designed to keep us coming back.
Things like phone bans and age limits show that people are starting to recognize the problem, but they do not fully solve it. As we have seen, these rules are hard to enforce and do not address why social media is so hard to put down in the first place. At the same time, it is hard to ignore the rise in anxiety, loneliness, and shorter attention spans, especially among young people.
