Instagram, YouTube, TikTok and computer games pose a more immediate threat to teens than alcohol and cannabis, according to new research in Germany that sheds light on the number of teens with dangerous and addictive digital media habits.
โWe are facing a tsunami of addiction disorders among young people, which I believe we are completely underestimating,โ says Rainer Thomasius, medical director of the German Centre for Addiction Research in Childhood and Adolescence (DZSKJ) at the University Medical Centre Hamburg-Eppendorf (UKE), which carried out the study together with health insurer DAK.
The study found that more than a quarter of all 10- to 17-year-olds show risky or pathological use of social media, and 4.7 per cent are what experts consider addicted.
โThe figures for problematic media use are five to 50 times higher than for risky cannabis or alcohol consumption in this age group,โ Thomasius says.
Although media use, unlike alcohol or cannabis, only has an indirect effect on a personโs central nervous system, the effects on the reward system in the brain are the same.