Living A Full Life

How social media shapes the developing brain, and what parents can do today

• Full Life Chiropractic • Season 3 • Episode 48

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Ever feel that jolt when your phone buzzes and suddenly you’re halfway through an endless scroll? We unpack why that happens, what it does to mood and sleep, and how it hits differently for teens whose brains are still wiring the circuits for impulse control, risk, and judgment. The takeaway isn’t doom—it's design. When we understand dopamine loops, cortisol spikes from online conflict and FOMO, and the melatonin crash that comes from late-night feeds, we can build simple rules that actually stick.

We walk through the research with a clear distinction between correlation and causation: social media doesn’t automatically cause depression, but overuse, comparison, and cyberbullying can intensify existing anxiety or low mood. There are real upsides too—supportive communities, practical local advice, and niche groups that bring people together. The pivot is curation. Follow accounts that teach and uplift; unfollow the highlight reels that nudge you into comparison. Learn how ad ecosystems chase a single search across apps so your feed feels like it’s “listening,” and put friction back in the system with no‑phone zones, app timers, and shared family rules that are easy to enforce.

Parents get a concrete playbook: co‑view content with kids under 14, run weekly history audits, set device boundaries for meals, cars, homework, and the hour before bed, and replace passive scrolling with real-world activities that restore attention and calm. We also tackle emerging risks from AI avatars and deepfakes, along with verification habits that help teens spot manipulation before it spreads. Finally, we name the red flags—withdrawal from in-person life, disrupted sleep, slipping performance, and any signals of hopelessness—and how to mobilize community and professional support fast.

If you’re ready to scroll smarter, protect sleep, and choose connection over comparison, this conversation gives you the tools. Subscribe, share with a parent who needs it, and leave a quick review to help others find the show. What boundary will you try this week?

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SPEAKER_00:

Welcome back to a living a full life podcast. I'm Dr. Enrico Dolci Gori, and today we're tackling one of the most talked-about health concerns trending all over social media. The link between social media and mental health. It's scrolling, is the scrolling part hurting us? Is it helping us? Or is it a little bit of both? Let's dig into the science, the risks, and how we can use social media in a healthier way. We're going to bring it home for both our use and our kids' use, especially teenagers. Social media is a daily habit for billions of people around the world, yet teens and young adults spend three to five plus hours on social media per day. Studies show correlations between high school media use and increased rates of anxiety, depression, sleep problems, and low self-esteem. Parents, teachers, and even governments are raising red flags, but the full story isn't so simple. We need to look at the research and really dive deep into what social media is really doing to our culture as a whole. But you know me, I'm thinking about our families, I'm thinking about our health, I'm thinking about ourselves and our children when we do this podcast. And we know from many podcasts that I've reviewed neuroscience is that the human brain develops until 25 years of age. We need to remember this because when we talk about the human brain, we talk about it up until two years old and everything that happens in the infancy and developmental stages of the brain. And how by the two-year mark, the size of the brain is starting to get to its maximum potential. However, size does not mean development. From two to 25, the brain develops. Motor skills, language skills, academia, uh, coordination, balance, all these things happen through those stages of development. And it's about that 10 through 25 phase where the frontal cortex develops connections. Cognition, risk, behavior, all these things develop later in the teenage years. And it's not until 25 when we have full connection. That's why when you go back to think about your life as a 19-year-old or 22-year-old, you're like, why did I do that? How did I do that? Why did I think that was smart? How did I jump off the roof of the garage onto a trampoline when I was 22? You wouldn't have done that at 29. There's a difference between that, the risk factor there and the things that happen with development. So we want to talk about these things. So correlation versus causation is not the best way to analyze things. I know the big thing right now in the media is Tylenol. And the jokes online is that Tylenol will cause autism if I take my Tylenol. That's not what it means. Correlation and causation can't be put together like that. So let's take that from the current events of today and talk about social media and mental health. It's not always the cause. So social media doesn't cause depression outright. But overuse in certain patterns like doom scrolling or comparisons or even cyberbullying can worsen current symptoms in teens. So if they're really feeling a little anxious or already feeling a little bit depressed, going online and doom scrolling and comparing and maybe even getting some bullying online can set people off the edge. So the positives to social media is that we have access to support communities for a whole bunch of stuff from welding to weaving to knitting to health to mental health groups to mom groups to parenting groups. There's so many good things that social media has connected us with support and groups and online um connections that you can have immediately. It's brought awareness to resources that you can access when you need something. You can go online and look up. Most people go to social media to ask local communities about where the best pizza place is or where the best barber is or wherever the things are. And they'll take that more seriously than just scrolling on a search engine like Google or DuckDuckGo and seeing the top rank. They'd rather hear it from somebody in a group. So social media has had some positive outcomes to it as communities and as, you know, as us networking as humans. The negatives is the constant comparison. All we get from social media is the highlight reel of other people's lives. And the people who have time to post all the time are usually a little bit more affluent, maybe make a little bit more money, do some other CEOs, they're selling stuff, whatever it is. They got time to be on social media, and they just show the highlight reels of them sitting on the beach in Fiji. And then we look at that stuff and we're like, well, I wish I was in Fiji. And then it lowers your own self-worth. Even in adults, it can cause a lot of things. The endless notifications and scrolling end up disrupting dopamine regulation, reinforcing addictive patterns. Every time we hear that little ding, people jump almost in like a stress response or like a 911 response to that notification. They got to check their phone in mid-conversation, mid-dinner. Something happens, boom, they're looking at their watch, looking at their phone. It's created a traumatic response and anxious response to these things that we're supposed to save naturally for responsive situations in life. A screeching tires of a car, running to that, uh a car horn going off, jumping to that. Um, things that really, you know, an animal coming around the corner for your kids or something like that, you know, that is our instinct. And it's being replaced or substituted with digital stress. The notifications just never stop. And that is disrupting the dopamine patterns in the brains, especially in the developing brain of your under 25-year-old kids. Nighttime scrolling reduces sleep quality, which directly impacts our mood the next day. So if you see this in your children, having that one-hour buffer time before bedtime is so important of just that quiet, no screens, no music, no digital influence. They can play with some toys if they want to. They can uh, you know, play a game of solitaire, like with cards if they want, on the table, the old-fashioned way, uh, whatever it is, just to decrease their mind, or just read a book, just kind of bedtime books, come back and read actual paper, not Kindle and screen time things. Uh exposure to harmful or misleading mental health hacks online and all the other misleading health tips and hacks online. These are the negatives that social media bring, which we need to make sure we screen and protect our children from, but also ourselves from. And realize when someone says, uh, the hack, the biohacking, I'm like, just turn it off, switch the podcast. There is no biohacking. There is no biohacking. God made the body the way it is perfectly. The DNA cannot be changed. If you start messing with DNA, you're really gonna screw things up. There is no hacking. There is no hacking of this infinite wisdom and this innate intelligence. There is no biohacking. There's no such thing. Do not listen to these people. These are key terms that are sent out there to be on the top of your feed. So you see this stuff, and they're like, you got to eat 290 grams of protein per day, and you're like a 120-pound woman, you're like, okay, let's, I'm gonna do this. I'm 49 years old, I'm gonna eat 200 grams of protein and I'm gonna run seven miles a day. And then you're in my office two weeks later because your hips are falling off your body. But the fact of the matter is, is there is no biohacking. There are, if you hear the magic supplements, the new and involved supplements, they're just taking the same six ingredients and putting them into a new capsule and then selling them as you know, the new male enhancement thing. Like it makes no sense. There is no biohacking. Please eat your organic foods and uh go back to some of the old podcasts we talked about, all that. So the physiology behind social media, the physiology behind screen time is brain chemistry. That's what we need to talk about. Social media taps into the same reward pathways as gambling. Dopamine hits every time you get a like, a comment, or a new follower, or a message, or a DM. It's the same thing as hitting 20 on the blackjack table, that dopamine rush that you get where you think you're gonna win. The stress response, online conflict causes stress. Have you ever had a negative comment in a comment feed about you or about something or about something you believe in? And then you felt that immediate stress. That was unnecessary. If you didn't have a phone, you would not you would not have seen that, you would not have done that. There's the fear of missing out, FOMO. There's an event that's coming up tomorrow, and you can't make it, causes stress. You didn't know about it, but you know about it now because you scrolled through Instagram. And then cyberbullying with our kids trigger cortisol spikes. Chronic stress can dysregulate the nervous system, and this deregulation causes immediate anxiety. Then there's the sleep disruption. The blue light and stimulating content before bed lowers melatonin, poor sleep, and worsens mood regulation. So those are those are the things that we need to think about on the physiology side. There's practical ways to look at this and set boundaries to help work with social media for our children. So no matter what age there are, set boundaries on this. Because the five plus hours on social media scares me. Because if we create this in this generation, they're gonna be normalized to spending that much time on their phones forever. And when they hit the workforce and you got to work all day, where is there gonna be the five hours of time to be on social media? There's gonna be no real self-reflective time for people moving forward. And some of you are guilty of this, some of you are in your 40s and you do this. And um, and as an adult, you can make your own decisions, but knowing this information, maybe you should cut it back too. Be like, wow, am I really spending 30 hours a week on social media? That's like a part-time, almost full-time job on the side. What else could I be doing with my life? Right. And we got to think about that stuff. Uh, time block social media. Use, you know, no scrolling times or particular scrolling times. I find the no scrolling times work better where there's boundaries of like during these times, you cannot be on your phones or tablets. That works better than like set times because they're like only between you know uh 4 p.m. and 6 p.m. you can be on social media. And it kind of limits it because maybe you got busy between 4 and 6 p.m., but you still want to go check Instagram at seven. So I find the blocking times are better. Use app timers. There's timers you can put on the phones, you can put you can connect them to your phone to your children's devices, which automatically tells you it's time to turn off. And then you can hit the button, say off. It'll turn off their pet iPad or kick them out of all their apps. There's digital well-being being tools you can find online as well. And then curate your feed. Follow uplifting educational accounts. Follow uplifting educational accounts, and you'll get more of those into your feed and you'll find that. You'd be like, my phone's listening to me. It's not quite listening to the audio that's talking about, it's catching your habits online and what you're searching. So if you search something on Google, let's say you search um Peloton bike or bike, indoor indoor biking um equipment. Boom. Now now your social media is gonna be tied up to that and they're gonna show you different types of ellipticals and inline biking and in-house biking things and ads from those companies for the next little while. And you're like, it's listening to me. No, it's really that one search you did 24 hours ago that ended up queuing a whole cascade because you went and checked it. And these things are all tied into your phone, believe it or not. Apple tried to uh tried to do a block a few years ago on that, but there's only a limitation on it, what they can do. So Google phones and Android phones, it's the wild, wild west. They're gonna track you forever. Um, so curate your feed, unfollow accounts that trigger comparison or negativity. This is for the guys out there, guys. Unfollow the and I think actually it's for everyone. Women too. I guess as a guy, you're out there, you know, comparing yourself to the 25-year-old athletes, and you're now, you know, you're in your 40s, and you're like, well, maybe maybe stop it. Those kids can do different things than you can do, and maybe makes you feel like you want to be back there and just eliminate those, just unfall. Hit the unfollow button, hit the unfollow button on all that stuff. Hit the unfollow button on the Kardashians, hit the unfollow button on the Paris Hilton's. Get rid of this stuff. Don't even follow these people. Follow things that are uplifting and replace your algorithm and your feed with the things that actually lift you up. Um, and replace actual scroll time. Do something, go for a bike ride, go for a walk, make fakes, face-to-face connections with your family time, dinner time, uh, neighbors. You go out, you know, have neighbor time where the kids play together, reading or mindful practice. Um, over conversations and strict bands usually lead to resentment from your kids. So encourage co-viewing and discussion about online content, especially with your kids under 14. Make sure you're co-viewing this stuff with them. What are they watching on YouTube? What is the algorithms that they're starting to build on there? What are they actually clicking on? Make sure you do audits every week on them. Say, hey, can I look at your Facebook feed? Just go to the history, go, or not even my kids are not allowed on any of the uh social media, but they are allowed on YouTube. So I have to go to their YouTube feed and look at the history and just see what's going on. Is it Dr. Squish? Is it all Dr. Squish videos? Is it all whatever? Is it all okay things that they can be watching? Uh, but if there's some other things in there, and then now we're starting to get into music and performers and concerts. So I got to make sure what stuff's coming up on their feed through the algorithms through there. So a once-a-week audit, it takes a few minutes just to go through their history and catch what the what the shorts and all the things that are coming on to, and honestly, what they're clicking on, because you can see the videos and in their history that they're actually watching. These are things you can audit and have those rules where you're allowed to audit the tablets at any time and any moment as a parent. That's those are good boundaries. And then just teach critical thinking to your kids as well about what they see online. Be like, hey, if this is uplifting and making you feel good and then making you sing and dance and you love the music and you love the jokes and the and it's funny, then you can continue watching that. If you watch anything that you don't like, please come show it to me so I can see what it is. What's the thing that's bringing them down? Was it scary? Was it uh influencing? Was it uh derogatory? Was it anything around those things? And make sure we delete that from the history and then click on the right things, or even take digital breaks. So here's some things as a parent to look at some red flags maybe from your children. And you probably know some of these, but here are just you know three or four red flags that if your kids are showing this, there has to be an immediate interference with the screen time. We have to limit it, we have to take it away, we have to do something drastic for our children to protect them and teach them. During that time, it's not a punishment, it's a teachable moment during those times. So noticeable withdraw from in-person social life. Once your kids are now no longer wanting to talk to their siblings or spend time around the table and they're running to their room to go use social media, that's a huge red flag because they're substituting the digital world for the real life. And some scary things that are happening with AI is these avatars that can be created now, you can now have full conversations with them, kind of like Siri or Alexa on your on your devices, more like Siri. Siri won't necessarily have a full conversation with you, but you can tell Siri, like, hey Siri, tell me a joke. And Siri will start telling you a joke, and then you can say, Hey Siri, what's the weather like? And you have direct question and answers. There are now AI avatars where you can create them and call them Buddy. And then Buddy will you can initiate, Hi Buddy, how are you? And Buddy will say, like, I'm doing great today. How are you? Name, and they'll be like, I'm doing great. That's great. What did you do today? Like, and is engaging them into a conversation. And some crazy things about it is you can create avatars of like your dead parents or your grandparents or the death of the neighbor or a child, and then and then they continue on as an avatar, which is messed up. If you really think I'm just trying to scare you a little bit, dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun, got the Jaws music there for you, just to kind of scare parents a little bit and yourself on how far this can go with AI. They said by 2025, uh, this was two years ago, and I think we're close, but by 2026, you will not be able to tell a real video from a fake video. Like it's you know, President Trump's gonna get up on there on a video, and you're gonna be like, What? We attacked Israel? Like, what's going on? And then you look at the go to the new news feeds and you're like, no, it's not true. It's gonna be so realistic, and then by 2030, it's gonna be out of control. Like your kids will send you text videos of them. It's not them, it's like somebody trying to create identity theft, and it's your child talking to you in a video, being like, Hey, you know, I'm down the street here. Can you just wire me some money? I I left my keys in my car, and it's gonna get out of control. Like, this is we're already there. So just remember why we need to protect ourselves on this digital world is because AI is getting out of there. So by having this, imagine your kid getting connected to buddy on an AI, and they're like, they're my best friend. Oh man, that's a tough break to make. Remember us growing up as kids, imaginary friends, and we're like, Oh, that's okay, they're using your you're using your imagination. Okay. And if you were seven years old, it was like, yeah, that's cute. If you were 17 years old, your parents were like, dude, there's no freaking imaginary friend. Like, we need to get you checked, right? Like, that's what happened in the 80s and 90s. Now, in 2025, you know, you can have your 17-year-old be like, I'm just talking to buddy. And that's not right. So we need to be we need to be careful with this stuff. Just that's more of a scare tactic for you to be on top of this digital stuff. Uh, drastic changes in sleep, that's another red flag. They're just not sleeping, their appetite gets cut off, uh, school and work performance starts to tank. It's because their mind is now focused somewhere else and it's in the digital world. Expressions, direct expressions of hopelessness or self-harm online. Work as a community, be tight with parents, be tight with other friends and families that your kids are friends with, so that you can watch out for each other's kids. When something is said, maybe to a friend and it's risky. Parents can get together and be like, hey, you know, just out of caution, you know, Amanda said this online last night. Is she doing okay? And then the parent can be like, wow, I didn't even what what are you talking about? What did she say? And then you can get into that and then sit down and manda be hey Amanda, we heard something uh along these lines. Tell me how you feel. How what was that all about? And we can catch these things early. Uh, if you see these signs, encourage professional support immediately. This is like immediately psychology, something to go in there, uh, or therapy to help. Because as a parent, you know how it is. You're wrong. Everything, everything you say is wrong. It's not no, you're not right. My six-year-old keeps saying no. The first word that comes out of her mind mouth is no. Hey, Abby, you know, don't get close to the oven. It's it's pretty hot. No, no. I'm like, no? What do you say no for? No, no, I wasn't. I know, I know, I'm not gonna get close. Like the first word out of her mouth is no, I'm always wrong. I'm like, girl. Uh, so you know how it is to be parents, and that's what I'm doing, just trying to influence um parents and and families to live a healthy life. And this is how we do it by protecting our children in a healthy way, and that's how it is. Digital can be useful. I gave you the positives of this and how we connect with the world. I connect with my cousins and stuff in Italy. I connect with is I love social media. It's great. We we get to see each other's kids, it's awesome. There's positives to it. I'm part of great groups, I'm part of my local community groups. We talk about health. It's I use it in a healthy way. I think I do, but I catch myself scrolling and then 45 minutes goes by. I'm like, have I been scrolling for 45 minutes? What the shnikes? And then I'm off of my phone and get on with my life. So, but I think that's a healthy way to do it. We need to teach those healthy habits to our kids. So stay well, stay healthy in the digital world as well, and have a healthy and fantastic week. And we'll catch you next week on another episode of Living a Full Life.

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Dr. Enrico Dolcecore

Host
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Dr. Christine Hafer

Co-host