Young people who are addicted to smartphones and the internet have an imbalance in their brain chemistry, a study has found. The Pew Research Center study was presented to the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA) on Nov 30.
According to the study, 46 percent of Americans claim that they couldn’t live without their smartphones. Though this might look a bit exaggerated, it’s rather obvious that more number of people are becoming dependent these days on smartphones and other gadgets for chatting, obtaining information, gaming and yes, making calls too. The potential long-term effects of such habits on people, especially youngsters, and also the effects on their brains were matters of curiosity among the scientific community as well as their parents. The present study should satisfy the curiosity, at least to some extent.
As part of the study, Hyung Suk Seo, M.D, a professor of neuroradiology at Seoul’s Korea University and his colleagues used magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS) to obtain insights on teen brains addicted to smartphone and internet. Nineteen young people with a mean age of 15.5 (9 of whom were males) who were diagnosed with smartphone or internet addiction and also 19 healthy peers (matched in age and gender with the first group) were involved in the study.
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