Habitual digital media use and the brain: a meta-analysis

Abstract Research on the relationship between digital media and neurocognitive function has blossomed with the rising digital age and advent of social media, producing a growing literature focused on how technological developments may be affecting users’ brains. Much of the science has focused on the involvement of specific brain systems that support reward (e.g., nucleus accumbens, orbitofrontal cortex), cognitive control (e.g., lateral prefrontal, anterior cingulate), and socio-emotional processes (e.g., temporo-parietal junction) and why they might be especially relevant to digital media engagement. However, a broad and systematic analysis of the consistency of findings across neuroimaging studies has not yet been published. Here, we conducted a coordinate-based meta-analysis based on published structural and functional MRI studies exploring habitual digital media engagement. Adopting a granular approach to summation of this literature, we use Activation Likelihood Estimation (ALE) and find that the most consistent effects arise in the anterior insular cortex, a region implicated in the integration of social and emotional information that has not been frequently highlighted in the prior literature on digital media effects in the brain. This discovery encourages reconsideration of how the brain is likely to affect, and be affected by, digital media engagement and online behavior. Competing Interest Statement The authors have declared no competing interest. Footnotes Declarations: This work was supported in part by a grant from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development to J. Chein, R01 HD098097. The authors have no relevant financial or non-financial interests to disclose. Approval was obtained from an IRB committee of Temple University and adhere to the tenets of the Declaration of Helsinki. The datasets generated during and/or analyzed in the current study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.