There was a fascinating article written this week about the impact of social media on the teenage mind. It is in the current JAMA Pediatrics. The study looked at the impact of habitual social media checking on pre-teens’ speed of response to positive, negative, or neutral social cues. It turns out that subjects that exhibited habitual social media checking would respond more slowly to these cues. This was demonstrated by observing the amount of neurologic activity in parts of the brain using fMRI technology. In other words, this study suggests that habitual checking of your social media accounts distracts or desensitizes teens from the actual human responses they encounter every day.