On neuroplasticity, young brains, and smartphones

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Neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty and Smart Phones (Psy­chi­atric Times):

In med­ical school, I was taught that the brain is hard­wired at birth. Dur­ing the past 30 years, neu­ro­science has defin­i­tive­ly shown that this is not the case at all. As our under­stand­ing of brain devel­op­ment advanced, it became clear that, dur­ing the first 3 years of life, neu­rons in the brain pro­lif­i­cal­ly form synap­tic con­nec­tions to be pre­pared for many diverse func­tion­al tasks, most of which it will nev­er encounter. From aged 3 years onward, the cir­cuits fre­quent­ly used strength­en their con­nec­tions while those serv­ing no func­tion are pruned away. Hence the com­mon phrase, “Neu­rons that fire togeth­er, wire together.”

… What does all this have to do with smart phones? As with any tool, behav­ior, activ­i­ty, or tech­nol­o­gy, smart phones have the poten­tial to be either a use­ful and high­ly con­struc­tive asset or a destruc­tive and harm­ful diver­sion from life. After accru­ing 10,000 hours on a smart phone, our brain has cer­tain­ly been impact­ed and rewired in a sig­nif­i­cant way. An unan­swered ques­tion that caus­es me a great deal of curios­i­ty and con­cern is: What is the impact on brain devel­op­ment dur­ing the first 25 years of life when a sig­nif­i­cant part of each day is spent look­ing into a smart phone and the result­ing cog­ni­tive and emo­tion­al expe­ri­ences? Just wondering…

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Screen Media Activ­i­ty in Youth: Friend or Fiend? (Psy­chi­atric Times):

Spend­ing time watch­ing tele­vi­sion, engrossed in a game on a tablet, glued to a gam­ing con­sole, or mes­sag­ing friends with a smart­phone have become quin­tes­sen­tial recre­ation­al activ­i­ties of chil­dren and ado­les­cents. Screen media activ­i­ty (SMA) con­sumes about 40% to 60% of after-school time,2 and near­ly 97% of US youth have at least 1 elec­tron­ic item in their bed­room … A recent meta-analy­sis found that while over­all SMA was not asso­ci­at­ed with aca­d­e­m­ic per­for­mance, youth report­ing more tele­vi­sion view­ing and gam­ing had poor­er com­pos­ite aca­d­e­m­ic per­for­mance, where­as ado­les­cents view­ing more tele­vi­sion had low­er lan­guage and math­e­mat­ics scores.

… Assess­ing the evolv­ing land­scape between SMA and men­tal health is becom­ing increas­ing­ly impor­tant. Tak­en togeth­er, a thought­ful assess­ment of SMA should be part of a men­tal assess­ment as much as any oth­er aspect of social or devel­op­men­tal his­to­ry. Only then can men­tal health prac­ti­tion­ers make edu­cat­ed deci­sions about whether SMA is a friend, fiend, or both for their young patients.

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