Social Media Use May Harm Teens' Mental Health.
BERMAN: All right, here's to your health. Social media, a lot of risks, right?</s>CAMEROTA: I -- it really makes me nervous. It makes me nervous how much time kids spend on it. And so what does the science now say?</s>BERMAN: Yes, right. Now there's a serious question about whether social media is making your child depressed. And a new study sheds light on the link between mental health and social media use. Here to talk about the latest research, our chief medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta. Sanjay, I think maybe not a surprise --</s>DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CHIEF MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Right.</s>BERMAN: But deeply, deeply interesting and I think compelling to parents everywhere.</s>GUPTA: I think so. Look, it definitely caught my attention as the father of three girls. The reason this is interesting is because it shed some light, not only on who's most likely to be affected, but what exactly is likely to be going on here. Why could frequent social media use be linked to depressive symptoms? And there's sort of three things that the researchers really zeroed in on. We could show you them. But basically the idea that if you are on social media frequently, and I'm going to explain what I mean by that in a second, you're more likely to be exposed to cyber bullying, you're more likely to have poor sleep and less physical activity. Perhaps, again, that is obvious, but those are the three reasons they're really zeroing in on as to why the depressive symptoms occur. Much more likely to occur in girls. Much more likely to occur in girls. Boys seem to be fairly insulated from those specific effects. Now, it doesn't -- doesn't mean that they don't have other things that are affecting boys. But with regard to poor sleep, less activity, cyber bullying, really affecting girls. Now, we also know that girls more likely to have depressive symptoms overall once they start adolescence. So up to adolescence boys and girls, similar rates of depression. After adolescence, girls really go up. And that's an effect that stays really until around the time of menopause. So you layer social media on top of that and you could see why you have some of these problems. You know, it's also worth pointing out, and this is a nuance, but an important nuance. This wasn't necessarily the amount of screen time, you're sitting there staring at a screen, but it was the frequency of screen time. And just think about that. That's the number of times you're picking up the device, looking at it, putting it down, picking it up, looking at it, putting it down. So it's that frequency you've got to pay attention to, not just the number of hours, the number of minutes you've been looking at social media overall.</s>CAMEROTA: And, Sanjay, what does it do when kids are always checking Instagram or Snap Chat or FaceBook. Like is there an attention span? Does it change your brain basically is what I'm asking?</s>GUPTA: Well, you know, it's interesting. We don't know the long-term impact of this, right, Alisyn? I mean we're seeing some of this unfold real time. We can look at other examples of things that cause these sort of dopamine surges. You're looking at your social media. You've gotten a bunch of attention from some sort of posts or likes or whatever it might be. We do know that you can get these bursts of -- of these feel good hormones, neuro transmitters in your brain. What we don't know is, does that then change your brain somehow, make it more tolerant so that it's harder to get joy out of things? We don't know that that's a long-term effect. It could be, but it's just too early to say that. If I had to guess just from a neuroscience standpoint, I don't think it's necessarily a long term problem, but it -- but, you know, the short term, it obviously can lead to these depressive symptoms.</s>BERMAN: We have 10 seconds left, Sanjay. Guide us. What are we going to do, take our kids phones away, because I'm not sure that's going to go over well?</s>GUPTA: This idea of frequency versus time, John, pay attention to that one. This isn't just about, hey, you know, look, you can't -- you can't possibly be on the screen for ten hours a day. It -- you shouldn't be picking it up and looking at it over and over again. Don't have enough time to read the list there, but set limits. Be engaged as a parent. It's probably one of the most important things you can do given the current culture.</s>BERMAN: Be a good role model is so hard for me.</s>CAMEROTA: Be a good role model.</s>BERMAN: It's so hard. That's the one I've got to work on with my kids because they see me picking up my phone all the time.</s>CAMEROTA: Not me. I'm a great role model. Sanjay, thank you very much.</s>GUPTA: You got it.</s>BERMAN: All right, we're just minutes away from the opening bell. And this is an important day. Dow futures are down sharply. And you're hearing people start wondering about a possible recession. Is that a real possibility? Our coverage picks up after this.