Each month our editorial team sifts through hundreds of papers and curates notable findings—for practitioners and informed readers who want to stay current with the evidence. Subscribe to the monthly Research Digest for expert analysis and concise summaries of key papers.
5 papers
The article says that heavy use of digital media and constant multitasking can harm thinking skills like focus, memory, and decision-making. It explains that intuition depends on brain networks and chemicals such as dopamine and serotonin. The piece cites research linking more media multitasking to smaller gray-matter density in a…
This meta-analysis combined 48 experimental studies with 7,679 people to test how seeing “upward” comparison targets on social media (people who seem better off) affects users’ feelings about themselves. Overall, exposure to upward comparisons produced a small but statistically significant negative effect on self-evaluations and emotions (g = −0.24, p…
This review examined how autistic people are shown in fictional media (Part A) and whether watching those portrayals changes what people know or feel about autism (Part B). Seventeen articles met the review rules: 14 analysed portrayals and 3 tested viewer effects (those 3 included five experiments). Media studied spanned…
This study followed 4,285 U.S. children from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development Study to look at patterns of addictive use of social media, mobile phones, and video games from about ages 11 to 15. The researchers found that high or steadily increasing patterns of addictive use were common. Those high…
The study asked people which body images they see in their own mix of mass media (TV, magazines) and social media (Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, Snapchat) using a new picture scale for women (thinness) and men (muscularity). It found that Facebook and YouTube were linked to stronger perceptions of media body…
