Social media use has skyrocketed over the past decade and a half.

Whereas only five
percent of adults in the United States reported using a social media platform in 2005,
that number is now around 70 percent.
Growth in the number of people who use Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and
Snapchat and other social media platforms — and the time spent on them—has
garnered interest and concern among policymakers, teachers, parents, and clinicians
about social media's impacts on our lives and psychological well-being.
While the research is still in its early years — Facebook itself only celebrated its
15th birthday this year — media psychology researchers are beginning to tease apart
the ways in which time spent on these platforms is, and is not, impacting our day-to-
day lives.
Social media benefits teens by expanding their social networks and keeping them in
touch with their peers and far-away friends and family. It is also a creativity outlet. In
the Common Sense Media report, more than a quarter of teens said that “social
media is ‘extremely' or ‘very' important for them for expressing themselves
creatively.”
But there are also risks. The Common Sense Media survey found that 13 percent of
teens reported being cyber bullied at least once. And social media can be a conduit
for accessing inappropriate content like violent images or pornography. Nearly two-
thirds of teens who use social media said they “'often' or ‘sometimes' come across
racist, sexist, homophobic, or religious-based hate content in social media.”
With all of these benefits and risks, how is social media affecting cognitive
development? “What we have found at the Children's Digital Media Center is that a
lot of digital communication use and, in particular, social media use seems to be
connected to offline developmental concerns ,If you look at the adolescent
developmental literature, the core issues facing youth are sexuality, identity, and
intimacy,” .
Research suggests that different types of digital communication may involve
different developmental issues.
In particular, exploring one's identity appears to be a crucial use of visually focused
social media sites for adolescents. “Whether it's Facebook, whether it's Instagram,
there's a lot of strategic self presentation, and it does seem to be in the service of
identity “I think where it gets gray is that we don't know if this is necessarily
beneficial or if it harms.”