New Studies Show Social Media Can Change Your Brain!
“The study also demonstrated a correlation between the number of online or Facebook friends with the number of real-world interactions and friendships forged by an individual”
“We cannot escape the ubiquity of the internet and its impact on our lives, yet we understand little of its impact on the brain, which we know is plastic and can change over time” says Dr. John Williams, Head of Neuroscience and Mental Health at the Wellcome Trust. The study also demonstrated a correlation between the number of online or Facebook friends with the number of real-world interactions and friendships forged by an individual.
“We have found some interesting brain regions that seem to link to the number of friends we have – both ‘real’ and ‘virtual’,” said Dr Ryota Kanai, one of the researchers from University College London. “The exciting question now, is whether these structures change over time. This will help us answer the question of whether the internet is changing our brains.”
Not everyone thinks that we have enough data to form a proper theory on the matter, however. Although the study found a link between human brain structure and online social network size, it did not test cause and effect.
Dr. Heidi Johansen-Berg, reader in Clinical Neurology at the University of Oxford’s Centre for Functional MRI of the Brain, said the study found only a weak relationship between the number of Facebook friends and the number of friends in the real world.
“Perhaps the number of Facebook friends you have is more strongly related to how much time you spend on the internet, how old you are, or what mobile phone you have,” she said.”The study cannot tell us whether using the internet is good or bad for our brains.”
