Screenagers & Neuroscience
Effects of screen time on the adolescent brain
- Behavioural dependency - relationship between screen use & mental health under study.
- Blue light emitting from screens suppresses melatonin, lowering duration & quality of sleep, impairing crucial processes for identity formation.
- "A young person’s brain lacks a fully developed self-control system to help them with stopping this kind of obsessive behaviour."
- Information overload impairs decision-making abilities, making it even harder to manage one's level of consumption - reliance on input for identity.
- Social media use triggers dopamine release - easily addicting, instant gratification.
- Amygdala (brain region involved in emotional processing) density related to adolescents' use of social networks (2018, Nature) - suggests social development.
- Positives of being online include support, inclusion & healthier coping strategies.
- Concern for youth's time spent online consuming unmoderated media, "most relevant to young people", controversy in many fields including psychiatric over true influence.
- Binge behaviour being seen with video streaming - could be interfering with time spent actively constructing identity, or safer alternative to dealing with mental health issues.
- Rise in cases of Internet Addiction Disorder, or otherwise pathological/problematic internet use - common culprits are video games & social media (endless feed scroll).
- Can be "beneficial for peer relations" - socialising online more comfortable option for introverted individuals, rather than shutting them off from people completely.
- Interfering with academic & social life and developing depressive symptoms, both of which can impair someone's sense, development & presentation of identity.
Identity & the Internet
Key terms, points & personal notes
- "You can be it, but you can't know it."
- Formed vigorously throughout adolescence and continues in adulthood.
- Identity is never final, always fluid, evolves throughout lifespan. Difficult to define.
- Knowing your own identity increases happiness, self-esteem & confidence.
- Comprised of decisions, attitudes, goals, standards, values, traits, roles, attributes.
- "Social category", features an individual takes pride in, cultural views.
- Influenced by socialisation, perception & relationships. Categorical.
- Real and virtual world are not separate, but on a Moebius strip - naturalisation of digital life, and thus adolescence is largely defined by spending time online.
- "What you know" as a component of identity - active learning through "Googling", search engines as a tool to reach your intended self.
- Past experiences, daily experiences, personality, body (mental health), social standing.
- Personal, social & collective components, all show themselves at different times - discovering online communities, e.g. local cosplay groups, queer safe spaces, fandoms.
- Misrepresenting oneself for an audience requires greater cognitive resources, comes from a place of self-doubt, behaviour is unnatural and exhausting.
- Believing in 'shoulds' from exposure to media (omnipresent on the internet) leads to questioning identity, lowering self-esteem & acting in dangerous ways, e.g. eating disorders rising from body appearance sharing on Instagram.
- Concept of personal continuity - an individual posing questions about themselves - is a process which "defines individuals to others and themselves."
- Internet has become an extension of adolescents' expression - online, "youth talk about their lives & concerns, design the content that they make available to others, and assess the reactions of others to it in the form of optimized and electronically mediated social approval . . . With each post, image or video they upload, they can ask themselves who they are and try out profiles that differ from the ones they practice in the 'real' world."
- Social media - peer approval creates a sense of belonging, important to identity formation & management.
- Digital identity is exposed to hyper-saturated world of media content - this can both fragment the necessary idea of personal continuity and help it along.
- 'Digital native' identity label dependent largely on socio-economic & geographical factors - context & potential privilege in living in developed countries with enough affluence to access the digital landscape at this scope.
- 'Information Age' (current cultural epoch characterised by technology) gave rise to Generation Z (born roughly between 1995 and 2005), known as 'digital natives' (born & raised with connectivity, not 'migrated' like previous generations) - generational identity.
This project may seem bleakly technologically deterministic on the surface, but I intend for it to be more so a commentary on our experiences (both positive and negative), and spark discussions about the issues I've researched. It would be nice to provoke questions rather than simply make statements. My next post will be creative experimentation informed by the research I've done.
Sources
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