Because social media is such a presence in our daily lives, many are worried about the social, emotional and developmental impacts it can have on children.

Our Christine recently spoke with a leading child psychologist at Norton Children's Behavioral Health to find out how social media addiction can affect a child's development.

Doctor Katie Hopkins is here.

Child psychologist with Norton Children's.

Okay, Doctor Hopkins, parenting in the Age of Social media is so hard because it's a world we didn't grow up in, and we've heard in the news a lot about social media addiction.

What is that and how big of a problem is it?

So, you know, I think that we need to be mindful that a lot when we talk about addiction, that we're actually talking about what what that means, what it means when anyone has kind of a problematic use of social media.

And when we talk about problematic use, we're talking about something that we see having a clear and detrimental impact on, not just their moods.

So decreased, you know, levels of happiness, increased depression, increased anxiety, increased, negative self-image, but also impacting their functioning.

Sleep is a big one.

That's where we're really seeing just, you know, screen use in general.

But social media particularly can have a negative impact on, on, how much sleep they're getting.

Certainly if self-image is wrapped up in that, it could be impacting their nutrition.

It could be impacting their behaviors.

So when we're thinking about determining or looking at, social media addiction, we really have to think about how does that use cause a problem in a teenager or child's life?

Okay.

You touched on sleep a little bit as a big warning sign.

So how does social media affect a child's sleep patterns?

Well, I mean, basically, the more they're on it, the more likely it is that they're going to be on it late at night having a hard time getting off of it.

And it's impacting not only the quantity of the sleep, but also the quality of the sleep, because their brain is still really active when you're on a screen, not just because of the content and the algorithms that keep scrolling.

You know, it's like an automatic video play after the, you know, you play one and then another one is automatically loaded.

And I think all of us have experienced that where we're like, oh, I'm tired.

And then we say, I'll just check.

I'll just hop on Facebook or Instagram really quickly and then 45 minutes have gone by and we thought that we were only going to be on for ten minutes.

But also the light from the screens itself impact the production of melatonin in our brains and trick our brains into thinking that it's the sun is still out, which actually makes it more difficult for us to get that restful, deep sleep even after we've turned it off.

Okay, well, how does overuse of social media impact a child's brain?

You've told us some things to watch out for, but how does it impact, say, brain development or attention span and those sorts of things?

Well, you know, it's a very adolescence is a very tender period when it comes to brain development.

You're really developing things like identity.

You're developing the ability to sustain attention and plan for the future.

These are all things that we want to see happening in adolescence.

And again, we think about that onset of adolescence like onset of puberty.

So it's different for every child.

But somewhere in that 10 to 14 age.

So we're thinking about okay, our brains are built based on what we think the most, do the most and feel the most.

So it's the content that we're engaging in.

Requires limited attention and a lot of reward.

And a lot of these social media apps are designed in a way to give us immediate feedback, immediate reward, immediate clicks.

I mean, even the likes the like button is is can be really powerful where it's like this dopamine hit in our brain.

And so we start seeking.

We see kids really start to seek out activities that give them that immediate dope dopamine.

So that's that that happy hormone in our brain, our get up and go hormone.

I want to keep doing it.

Hormone.

And so if we're if we're getting a lot of immediate hits, we're going to continue to seek out that short term reward system versus looking for things that give us more, longer term rewards and sustained happiness.