The Neurological Effects of Media Use

Entertainment media and technology have increasingly become a part of daily life as technology has become more advanced. While these technological advances allow for many incredible things to occur like more access to learning tools and increased ability to communicate with people across the world, the scientific community is still learning how this increased daily exposure to technology affects how one’s brain functions. As people are consuming more media, they will also be increasingly exposed to many different varieties of media including some that contain violence. One interesting area of developing research in this field is how exposure to violent media can impact behavior and perception. Researcher Dr. Stockdale and colleagues published a paper in 2015, “Emotionally Anesthetized: Media Violence Induces Neural Changes during Emotional Face Processing”, which focused on how exposure to media violence affects the way that the brain processes other’s emotions. There were two groups of undergraduate students who were shown either a violent media clip or a neutral non-violent media clip (Stockdale). The experimental group (shown a violent media clip) demonstrated decreased amplitude of N170 and P200 ERPs (event-related potentials) as well as a decrease in amplitude of N200 and P300 ERPs on their EEGS when compared to the participants that were shown a neutral clip (Stockdale). Previous research has demonstrated that the P200 ERP is the hallmark of emotional face processing and the P300 ERP is the hallmark of inhibitory control in the brain (Stockdale).  This finding demonstrates that exposure to violent media can alter the way that people process emotions that they see on other people and the decreases in the amount of inhibitory control that they exhibit in response to their respective emotional responses (Stockdale).

Another important area of research regarding the increased amount of media that people are consuming in this modern age is its effect on childhood development. A set of researchers at the Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center including Dr. John H. Sutton set out to shed some light on this question. In a paper published in 2019, “Associations between Screen-Based Media Use and Brain White Matter Integrity in Preschool-Aged Children” studied the neural changes that occur in children after more exposure to media than the American Association of Pediatrics recommended. The researchers associated the amount of screen time that preschool children are exposed to with the results of cognitive testing and diffusion tensor MRI (Sutton). They conducted tests that measured each participant’s vocabulary, phonological processing, and literary skills (Sutton). The study found that higher reported screen times, using a parent reporting system called ScreenQ survey, were associated with lower cognitive scores and lower white matter integrity in the brain of the participants (Sutton). Even though the media usage was self-reported by the participant's parent, these findings show an interesting correlation that should be explored more to further understand the effects of prolonged media/technology use.

Given the current situation that the world is in because of the coronavirus, technology and entertainment media have become even more of a necessity than they were in the past. With people staying home for weeks at a time in order to prevent the spread of the virus, technology and entertainment media have become an even more powerful tool to stay connected with others and entertained during this time. The neurological impact of persistent media and technology use must be studied so that scientists can make appropriate recommendations regarding the use of technology in the future as the world proceeds into the new normal that will follow this outbreak.

Works Cited

Stockdale, Laura A., et al. “Emotionally Anesthetized: Media Violence Induces Neural Changes during Emotional Face Processing.” Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, vol. 10, no. 10, 2015, pp. 1373–1382., doi:10.1093/scan/nsv025.

Sutton, John H., et al. “Associations between Screen-Based Media Use and Brain White Matter Integrity in Preschool-Aged Children.” JAMA Pediatrics, vol. 174, no. 1, Jan. 2020, doi:10.1001/jamapediatrics.2019.3869.