Dopamine Research Paper

As Kevin, a nine-year-old boy, returns home from school, he is asked by his mother how school went that day. Kevin replies with an unresponsive, “fine.” Then he goes up to his room where he will spend the rest of the night playing video games, texting his friends, and scrolling through endless amounts of social media. Kevin does not come down for dinner, instead he texts his mom to bring it up to him. His mom wonders why Kevin stopped playing with his younger brother and won’t come out of his room everyday after school. She starts to rethink the Christmas present that she got for Kevin, a brand new iPhone 6. Kevin had begged for a smartphone because all of his friends owned one and he didn’t want to be the only one who didn’t have a smartphone.

His mom was reluctant and bought him a new iPhone because she didn’t want her son to feel left out and she thought it would be a good way for Kevin to communicate via FaceTime with his father who works in a different state. Kevin’s mom regrets getting her son a smartphone. She is fearful of the information that he is putting up on social media websites and doesn’t know how to keep a close watch without invading her son’s privacy.
Parents all over the world are experiencing stories similar to what Kevin’s mom is experiencing with her son. Children as young as seven are proud owners of a smartphone. Time with family and friends are now being interrupted by the “rings” and “buzzes” of tweets, texts, and Facebook notifications. In extreme cases, like Kevin’s, children do not have any social interaction outside of school besides the chat rooms and messaging apps that smartphones provide.
It is startling just how much society has formed the digital minds of younger generations. A dramatic change is needed in the way society views children’s use of digital media and it starts with a change in parents allowing their children to own a smartphone. Although the social norm of children owning digital devices is becoming more and more popular over the years, children under the age of 16 should not own a smartphone because of the many social, psychological, and dangers of the unpoliced internet effects that smartphones have on children. Cellphones in general have social effects on children such as, less face-to-face interactions with friends and family that is essential in the stages of childhood development. Not only are these digital demons effecting children and teens, but along with a Smartphone’s capability to access the unprotected internet, many adolescents are struggling with cyberbullying, self-image, sexting/porn, and many other negative effects that social media casts onto teens.
With many children owning digital devices it is easy to wonder what the effects on the developing brains of these children are. In a 2011 study by the Pew Research Center’s Internet and American Life Project, “95 percent of all young people, ages twelve to seventeen, use the Internet, and 80 percent use social media. Ninety-three percent have Facebook accounts, and 41 percent have multiple accounts” (Jensen 210). The usage of the internet and social media in an adolescent’s life is wide-spread and the number of young users continues to grow. Parents must know what the physiological dangers of internet usage are before their children become a victim of technological disorders. Too much screen time can cause some of these technological disorders. So how much screen time is too much for a child? Chapman and Pellicane state “the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that children older than two years old should get no more than two hours a day of screen time” (19). Today, with technology being integrated more in school, children are exposed to just about 1-2 hours already. That means that children should only get up to 1 hour or less of screen time at home (Chapman and Pellicane 19). Many children, like Kevin, are exceeding the recommended screen time and spending countless of hours on multiple devices. Not owning a smartphone can help decrease the number of screen time that a child is exposed to. So what happens to a child if they experience too much screen time?
Too much screen time can be dangerous in a developing child because of the signals and chemicals sent from the brain with each Facebook notification, text, or tweet.

In many studies, researchers have found that the chemical dopamine is released from the brain whenever an instant alert pops up on one’s own digital device. Dopamine is a highly addictive chemical that is discharged to create pleasure. Too much Dopamine can send social media users into an addiction. The chemical dopamine is also released from the brain when someone undergoes drugs. A drug addiction and an internet addiction can be one in the same with many side-effects. Some of the side-effects of excessive internet usage on an adolescent are described in Frances E. Jensen’s book titled “The Teenage Brain”. He states that “several studies have shown a connection between depression, poor academic performance, and the inability to curb time spent online” (Jensen 207). Think about it, if a child spends more and more time on the internet, the more dopamine the brain has to release in order for the child to be satisfied. That is why it is harder for a kid to stop spending so much time on social media because his/her brain needs a longer time looking at a screen in order to be content. Too much of something can be a bad thing, in this case, too much exposure to the internet can be a very bad thing. Along with an inability to spend less time on social media, children often have a poor academic performance in school. This is because of the many digital distractions that smartphones can have on children. While a child or an adolescent is trying to do their homework, they often are distracted with texts from a friend, likes on an Instagram picture, or a new follower on Twitter. Every notification takes the student’s focus away from the academic task at hand. Students can also forget to do their homework or neglect their homework totally because their social media was too important to them at the time. One way

parents can keep their children from distractions and lessen the chance of an internet addiction is by abstaining their children from the single leading cause of all of this, smartphones.
Another danger of the internet is the negative effects that social media has on developing children and adolescents. Cyberbullying, for example, is a very real and ongoing issue on many social media websites. In this new technological era, cyberbullying can be more emotionally harmful to a student than old-school face-to-face conflicts because of the 24-hour access to social media and the anonymous status of the bully. Janell Burley Hofmann talks more about the issues of a faceless bully and defines what cyberbullying is in her book titled “iRules”. She references StopCyberbullying.org, “cyberbullying is when a child, preteen, or teen is tormented, threatened, harassed, humiliated, embarrassed or otherwise targeted by another child, preteen or teen using the internet, interactive and digital technologies or mobile phones” (Hofmann 48). Cyberbullying can happen anywhere to anyone weather one knows they are being bullied or not. With the advancement in cellphones, smartphones now have the capability of capturing a picture with an embedded camera. In many cases, students use their smartphones to take a picture of their peer and put offensive captions on the photo. Then the photo is posted to a Snapchat story, which is a social media story board of pictures. Only their friends on Snapchat can see the picture posted to the story, therefore the victim is being bullied without their knowledge. This form of bullying is also hard for administrators, parents, and even law enforcement to catch because of the anonymous status of the bully and the incapability to access different social media posts for example, Snapchat stories. With a smartphone’s ability to access the internet, these digital devices are now being used to torment other students. To avoid a parent’s child from cyberbullying or being cyberbullied through texting and social media posts, a parent must avoid buying their child a smartphone until they are at the mature age of sixteen.