The Adverse Effects of Smartphone Overuse on Brain Structure and Function: Depression, Anxiety, and Reduced Cognitive Function

[이데일리 강민구 기자]

“If you look at your smartphone for a long time, you get a headache.”

From videos to games. This is a common phrase parents use to discipline their children who are addicted to the smartphone world. Most parents would have thought that it was a sound made to restrain their children from overusing their smartphones, but in fact, taking a look at domestic and international research results, using smartphones for a long time has an adverse effect on the brain.

Various studies have proven that overuse of smartphones can alter brain structure and function, negatively affecting cognitive function and mental health.

The longer you use your smartphone, the more likely you are to experience depression and anxiety.

It is not difficult to find research results that smartphones can adversely affect emotional and cognitive functions. As a result of a survey of 135 college students conducted by San Francisco State University in the United States in 2018, loneliness, depression, and anxiety were more common in students who spent a lot of time using smartphones.

In Peru, a survey was conducted on 370 medical students whose smartphone use increased during the COVID-19 period, and it was concluded that excessive use of smartphones was highly correlated with increased symptoms of depression and anxiety.

There are also research results that can negatively affect brain function itself. Excessive use of smartphones can reduce the ability to regulate emotions and reduce cognitive function.

According to the results of a study that investigated brain structure and activity through brain imaging methods such as functional MRI to find out what is happening in the brains of excessive smartphone users, excessive smartphone users have improved brain cognitive function in response to external stimuli. This degradation can be confirmed. Looking at their brains, it was found that the volume of gray matter in the frontal lobe related to emotion and cognitive control was reduced, and the connectivity of neural circuits with surrounding brain areas was also disconnected.

Dr. Joo-Hyun Kim of the Korea Institute of Brain Science explained, “The results revealed through domestic and international research papers show that excessive use of smartphones affects the actual brain structure and function and threatens mental health.”

Requires long-term work, goal setting, etc.

In particular, there is an analysis that stimulating or short content, such as the recently popular ‘short form (short video)’, can have a more negative impact on children’s brains. This is because the brain works in the same structure as drug or alcohol addiction.

According to experts, in the process of consuming short-form content, reward-related neural circuits in the brain repeatedly secrete dopamine hormones in a short time, which is similar to the process of drug or alcohol addiction. Drug or alcohol addiction is because ‘dopamine compensation’ according to the repeated secretion of dopamine is the main mechanism of addiction.

The ‘dopamine reward’ that occurs in the brain while watching short-form content is not as high as that of drugs and alcohol, so it does not develop into a serious addiction like these, but it can be connected to a lower level of addiction. This is why the more I look at smartphone short-form content, the more I want to see it.

Above all, if you fall into short-form content, it can affect your learning ability as parents worry. It is explained that as the brain gets used to the fast-paced format in a short time, the ability to learn mathematics or science, which requires long thinking and concentration, inevitably declines.

Dr. Kim Joo-hyun said, “Excessive use of smartphones is not a serious addiction disease like drug addiction or alcohol addiction, but like other addiction diseases, it causes problems in the dopamine-compensating neural circuit in the brain, so side effects such as dependence and tolerance that are common in addiction diseases As a result, emotional disorders such as depression, nervousness, and anxiety or reduced cognitive function may appear.”