Month: February 2021

Editor's note: In this blog post, Dr. Sharon Levy interviews her son Isaiah Levy, a college student. We appreciate Isaiah’s insights and comments on social media's impact on teens and young adults.

It is hard to remember (or for younger people, hard to imagine) a world without social media, but indeed such a world once existed — and in fact, it is the world humans evolved in.

Humans are social animals. Friendly interactions release dopamine in our brains’ reward centers to get us to repeat the behavior. Until recently, that feedback loop suited us very well, with little opportunity to get off track. Social media changed things by providing the opportunity for nearly infinite interactions. This excess exploits our natural inclination for social contact in the same way that sweets exploit our natural drive to eat ripe fruit. Too much refined sugar can cause a cascade of medical problems; too much social media can also affect health — especially mental health.

Beyond sheer volume, social media interactions are qualitatively different from in-person meetings. For one thing, social media platforms have developed easy opportunities for viewers to react to content, resulting in objective feedback metrics for the content creator. Because the denominator is essentially infinite, no matter how many likes a post gets, the numerator may not feel like enough. Feeling insufficient, not liked enough, judged by others, or excluded from an "in group" takes a heavy toll on mental health.

For perspective from a digital native, I posed questions about social media to my son Isaiah Levy, a computer science major at New York University.

What do you see as the benefits of social media?

Theoretically, social media can connect people across the globe at scale, presenting an opportunity for users to form relationships beyond their geographic boundaries. Popular social media platforms can also provide a stage with a potential audience of one billion eyes. Social media offers tremendous potential for people who want to be noticed. However, most connections are extensions of our real-life relationships, and many users say that social media enriches friendships. For example, a Pew survey found that a majority of teenage respondents said that Instagram enhanced their connections with people they already knew (many of whom are classmates).

Why is Instagram so popular with young people?

Web developers and graphic designers created Instagram using sophisticated algorithms and attractive visual presentation, to keep users engaged and interacting with its nearly limitless content for as long as possible. According to surveys done by Facebook (owner of Instagram), youth describe Instagram as current, friendly, trendy, and creative. Many teens say that Instagram helps define who they are and makes them feel more connected to the people they know. Another significant source of Instagram's allure, particularly for younger users, are the objective feedback measures that can make users feel important or of high social status.

The flip side is that the drive for attention creates its own problems. The Pew survey linked to above found that more than one-third of teen Instagram users said they feel pressure to post content that will get a lot of likes and comments, and more than 40% feel pressure to only post content that makes them look good. According to Facebook’s own internal surveys, more than 13% of teen girls said that Instagram worsens suicidal thoughts, and 17% said their eating disorders got worse with Instagram use.

As the government considers regulating social media, what suggestions do you have in regard to protecting mental health?

Government regulations should protect our freedom of expression while mediating risks, especially to children. The government could consider regulating some of the advanced algorithms that social media corporations use to increase user time expenditure (and thus profits). For example, "infinite swiping" is a design feature that continuously pushes forward new content after a user has exhausted content from the people they follow. These tactics pose serious threats. Just like use of alcohol, nicotine, or drugs, the act of swiping triggers neurological reward. Over time, the brain learns to seek social media instead of more natural rewards, putting users at risk of dissociation with meaningful priorities. As with drug addiction, younger users are at greatest risk. Government regulation of the most sticky algorithms would help promote a healthier balance for users. Deciding which algorithms to ban and how to implement such a ban is certainly a difficult task, and the solution will not be perfect; however, given what we know of the impact of social media on children’s mental health, it should be a federal priority.

While the government grapples with regulation, parents can step in. First, set a good example by putting your own screens down when interacting with your children. Talk to your teen about the pros and cons of social media: while it can be fun, it can also become a distraction. Set limits on your child’s social media use. Most importantly, talk to your children about their experiences, including who they are interacting with and what they are talking about. We know social media can harm mental health, so be on the lookout and intervene if you have concerns.

Recently, my brother mentioned he was sleeping better since he got new prescription glasses with a blue-light filter. He wears his glasses mostly for reading screens (both computer and smartphone) during the day while at work. So I was intrigued, but a little skeptical: could daytime use of blue light-filtering glasses make a difference in how well he slept? How, when, and why blue light affects us seemed like good questions to pose to an expert before deciding whether those glasses could help me, too.

What is blue light?

Visible light includes a short segment of wavelengths tucked into the electromagnetic radiation spectrum. Together, the wavelengths of visible light captured by our eyes are translated into white light by our brains.

You may remember looking through a prism to bend the wavelengths that make up white light into a rainbow of colors. At one end of this rainbow, blue light shades toward violet. Sunlight has a lot of light at all visible wavelengths.

Measured in nanometers (nm), visible light wavelengths range from 400 to 700 nm. Blue-light wavelengths lie between about 450 and 495 nm. And different slices of blue-light wavelengths have different effects on our bodies, including on sleep and alertness.

How does light affect our bodies?

In addition to helping us see, light also has nonvisual effects on the body, says Dr. Steven Lockley, a neuroscientist at the Division of Sleep and Circadian Disorders at Harvard-affiliated Brigham and Women’s Hospital.

The 24-hour circadian clock in the brain regulates sleep and wake cycles, hormonal activity, eating and digesting, and other important processes within the body. “Special photoreceptors in the eye detect light to control our circadian rhythms,” he says. These cells contain a nonvisual photopigment called melanopsin, which is most sensitive to 480 nm light at the blue-green end of the visible light spectrum. Other visual photoreceptors called cones allow us to see even shorter wavelengths of blue-violet light at around 450 nm.

How can blue light affect sleep?

During the day blue-enriched light is desirable, because it helps synchronize our circadian clocks to a 24-hour day. So, exposure to a regular light-and-dark cycle is vital to achieve and maintain good sleep.

Stimulation from certain wavelengths of blue light helps us stay alert, whether this comes from a natural source like the sun in daytime hours, or from electronic devices that emit blue light. While the stimulation is helpful during the day, at night it can interfere with sleep. Blue-light exposure in the evening — for example, binging a TV series on your laptop right before bed — will stimulate the melanopsin-containing cells and alert the brain, making it think it is daytime. That can make it harder to fall asleep and may affect the quality of your sleep.

Blue-light filtering: Can it help a tired body and tired eyes?

Although a recent systematic review suggested that blue light-blocking glasses may help people with insomnia, Dr. Lockley says there’s not enough detail about the studies to draw that conclusion. Most commercially available blue light-filtering glasses, and special coatings added to prescription lenses, aren’t standardized. So you have no way of knowing which wavelengths are being blocked, and whether this affects only visual function, or important nonvisual functions such as alertness and the circadian clock. Also, the timing, duration, and nature of the nighttime light exposure in the summary of these studies was not clear.

If you want to block stimulating blue light that could interfere with sleep, avoid screen use as much as possible after dusk — especially within two to three hours of bedtime. You can also try using computer software that reduces the amount of blue light emitted. Examples include Night Shift (available on Apple devices) or f.lux, a free download available for all computers and related devices. You should also try to address other issues that affect your sleep.

To help reduce eye strain, a common concern for people who use screens often, the American Academy of Ophthalmology advises taking regular breaks using the 20-20-20 rule. Every 20 minutes, look away from your screen at an object about 20 feet away for about 20 seconds.

You should also get as much daylight exposure as possible in between screen use to provide a strong circadian and alerting stimulus, particularly if you spend most of your time indoors.

As for my brother, he doesn’t watch much television and tends to prefer reading print books in the evenings. He agreed that he might be experiencing a placebo effect from the blue-light filter on his new glasses — or simply that he is sleeping better now that he has the correct prescription, and therefore less eye strain.