Social Media and Executive Functioning: Best Practices for Teens

Can your favorite social media app actually make it harder to focus, plan, and stay organized?

Social media can be helpful but might overload your executive functioning if used excessively. Learning how it affects your thinking, emotions, and self-control can help you make more informed choices online.

This guide explores how social media influences executive functioning in teens, the science behind it, and simple strategies to help you stay sharp while still enjoying your favorite apps.

Disclaimer: It should be noted that all of the content in this article will describe various studies, with various different findings. Social media alone is not guaranteed to result in any of these outcomes. The impact that social media has on a person also depends on many other important factors, like physical health, engaging in healthy habits (e.g., diet, rest), and social adjustment among friends and family.

Click here to jump down to the TL;DR summary.

Review of Executive Functioning

Executive functioning is a set of mental skills that help you manage your thoughts, actions, and emotions to reach your goals. These skills include things like planning ahead, staying focused, remembering important information, and controlling impulses. For example, executive functioning skills help you break a large class project into smaller parts, remember the deadline, and avoid distractions while trying to complete it.

Everyone’s executive functioning skills grow and change with age. Executive functioning skills grow based on genetics and your environment. Factors in the environment, such as chronic stress or using too much technology, can impact the development of executive functions. This can make it harder to stay focused on the tasks that lead to your goals.

Teenage Brain Development & Technology

According to the National Center for Health Statistics, 50% of teens between the ages of 12-17 reported being on their phone for 4 hours daily between 2021 and 2023. Approximately one-fourth of teens reported experiencing symptoms of anxiety or depression.

During the teenage years, the brain is still growing and changing (p.4). This is especially true in an area called the prefrontal cortex. This area of the brain helps us with self-control, decision-making, and planning. This area of the brain is not fully developed until at least your mid-20s. This means teens naturally experience more variability with attention and impulse management.

The Science Behind Social Media and Executive Functioning

All while this is happening, our social media apps are designed to grab your attention. This is done by triggering the brain’s reward system. Dopamine makes you feel good, and the release of this chemical encourages your body to keep doing whatever resulted in the positive experience. On social media, dopamine is released by checking for new likes, comments, and other notifications. This creates a cycle, or feedback loop, where the brain wants more of those brief rewards, which makes it harder for the developing prefrontal cortex to practice self-control and make thoughtful decisions.

The “Attention Economy”

Our attention is valuable to the social media industry. The term “attention economy” describes how attention is now a valuable resource for online businesses. Social media platforms are designed to capture and maintain our attention in ways that make it difficult to disengage. Social media platforms encourage continued use, encourage us to connect with others through their platforms, and use the information collected to get better at capturing our attention. The things we are interested in are often reflected in our social media and are represented throughout personalized advertisements.

Social Media and Executive Functions

Executive functioning skills have been found to be negatively impacted by excessive social media use. Frequent or prolonged social media use may impact sleep and emotional well-being. Executive functions can be influenced by patterns of repetitive or compulsive social media use. Below are some ways in which excessive social media use can impact various executive functions.

Attentional Control

Attentional control is an executive functioning skill that helps us focus on the things in our environment that help us attain our goals while filtering out distractions.

Excessive social media use can lead to difficulty filtering out distracting information in our day-to-day lives (e.g., a car driving by, or a person entering or leaving a room). This makes it harder to pay attention to the things that we want to, and ignore the things happening around us.

Cognitive Flexibility

Cognitive flexibility is an executive functioning skill that helps us adapt to changes in the environment and switch between tasks.

Technology use has been found to result in increased performance on multitasking activities, but this depends on the age of the individual (p. 1).

Working Memory

Working memory is an executive functioning skill that encompasses our ability to store information in our minds and recall it later when needed.

When we struggle to attend to the stimuli in our environment that are aligned with meeting our goals, it’s much harder to hold information in our mind and retrieve it later from memory (p. 489-490). There is also so much information that we consume online (think, doom-scrolling), which we consume rapidly without storing it in our memory.

Delaying Gratification

Each day, we move forward in pursuit of our goals. Goal achievement requires that we have the ability to delay gratification in exchange for more desirable rewards later on. Using social media can make it harder to resist impulses and deal with discomfort.

For example, if one of our goals for the day is to run errands, we can expect to feel satisfaction in completing the errand successfully. We will feel even better if we can complete those errands in a quick and efficient manner, such as if we aim to be home in two hours. This goal takes considerable effort, whereas scrolling through social media will provide gratification immediately and continuously. Oftentimes, immediate gratification from social media can sometimes lead us to postpone our original goals to run errands, for example.

6 Strategies for Managing Social Media Use for Teens

Positively, we can modify our social media use habits to support our well-being! This is not only an important practice for kids and teens, but as adults, we should also model healthy social media use.

1. Reducing/Limited Social Media Use

Most strategies involved reducing or limiting social media use. There are strategies that can be implemented to help limit your use. Some simple strategies include downloading apps that help you set limits on the amount of time you spend engaging with the platform or placing your social media notifications on “do not disturb” during a certain period of the day. I personally have found it helpful to disable both push notifications and badge notifications after 7 pm. I am more likely to stay off social media if I am not notified in the first place.

Many people underestimate how much time they spend scrolling on social media, and upon being faced with the reality, are more likely to take steps to change. If you decide to go through with limiting your use, make sure you have different enjoyable activities or a routine in place instead to help hold yourself accountable.

2. Self-Monitoring Consumption

A less studied option would be to self-monitor your engagement with social media, rather than reduce it. This might look like actively challenging the negative thoughts that occur when seeing something, such as a social comparison, on social media. Teenagers can track their negative beliefs about themselves and challenge the truthfulness of these in the moment, using Thought Records (for example). Teens can also practice self-compassion exercises before engaging with social media as a preventative measure against social pressures seen online.

Another way to self-monitor your social media use is to check in with yourself while you’re scrolling. Set a brief timer (5-10 minutes) to alert yourself to when it’s time to check in. When the timer goes off, ask yourself what content you’re engaging with. Is it bringing you joy, or contributing to your stress? What is the purpose of being on social media, and are you fulfilling that purpose right now? If not, take meaningful steps to re-engage with content that you want to see.

3. Social Connectedness

Social media can fulfill our need for social connectedness. Individuals with unique stressors in their lives can connect with others who share their experiences through online platforms and threads. Many use social media to stay in touch with friends and family more regularly. However, the pressure of social comparison can make people feel dissatisfied with their experiences and looks. Taking time to intentionally reflect on the purpose of using social media and how you would like to feel afterwards can help you identify ways to modify your online consumption.

4. Reconnect with the Present Moment

For some teenagers and young adults, social media can serve as a tool for escapism. Escapism happens when someone distracts themselves from everyday stressors. Distracting oneself, when used as a coping skill in moderation, can be helpful. However, excessive use of social media and other virtual platforms can impact productivity, damage relationships, and worsen feelings of depression and anxiety. Learning self-regulatory strategies such as grounding and mindfulness can help refocus on the present and avoid excessive use of distracting strategies.

5. The Pomodoro Technique + Ad Blockers

Regardless of whether you’re studying for an important test or trying to focus on connecting with friends online, there are some strategies you can combine to prevent distractions. The Pomodoro Technique is when you work for short intervals of intense focus, with short breaks in between each interval. This can be paired with an ad blocker, which helps block distracting, targeted websites from popping up during your focus periods. This strategy will be more impactful if you are intentional about making the dedicated work time “scroll-free.”

Some helpful Pomodoro web pages and apps can be found here.

6. Prioritize Other Healthy Activities

While you are looking for healthy ways to manage your social media consumption, consider implementing or revising your other daily routines. Creating healthy sleep habits and eating healthy will help improve your overall well-being and can also help improve your mental health.

Escapism, as mentioned a couple of paragraphs above, can be a helpful coping strategy. Instead of using social media as your form of ‘escapism’ consider replacing this with something more active and productive, like working out, going on runs, or exploring places in your community to take nature walks or geocache. You might be surprised to find that one of these other forms of escapism makes you feel much better (and revitalized) afterward!

Additional Resources and Tools

Parents, educators, and other professionals looking to support teens with executive functioning (EF) challenges can visit the Life Skills Advocate Executive Functioning 101 Resource Hub for practical tools, strategies, and guidance. The Resource Hub offers easy-to-use materials focused on building core EF skills. These resources can be especially helpful for addressing EF struggles that may be worsened by too much social media use, such as difficulty focusing, procrastination, or impulsive decision-making. Whether you’re working with neurodivergent students or simply helping teens develop healthier tech habits, the strategies found in the Resource Hub can be adapted to meet a wide range of needs at home, in schools, or in therapy settings.

If you’re a parent looking for home recommendations, it may be beneficial to establish a Family Media Plan. The American Academy of Pediatrics has materials and tutorials available to help you better establish boundaries around social media and manage a home environment aligned with your priorities. It can be a challenge to implement formal boundaries around social media use at home, but these resources are a great place to start!

TL;DR Summary

Further Reading

• Casey, Jones, & Somerville (2011) – Braking and Accelerating of the Adolescent Brain
• Center for Humane Technology (2021) – The Attention Economy
• CDC National Center for Health Statistics (2024) – Daily Screen Time Among Teenagers: United States, July 2021–December 2023
• Common Sense Media (2025) – 18 Apps to Help Kids Stay Focused
• Matthews, Mattingley, & Dux (2022) – Media multitasking and cognitive control across the lifespan
• Mikami, Khalis, & Karasavva (2025) – Logging Out or Leaning In? Social Media Strategies for Enhancing Well-Being
• Psychology Today (2018) – The Dopamine Seeking-Reward Loop
• Stanford Medicine (2021) – Addictive potential of social media, explained
• Therapist Aid (2025) – Thought Record
• Uncapher, Thieu, & Wagner (2105) – Media multitasking and memory: Differences in working memory and long-term memory
• Verywell Mind (2023) – The Meaning of Escapism in Psychology
• Zapier (2025) – The 6 best Pomodoro timer apps in 2025
• Life Skills Advocate (2021) – Executive Functioning 101: All About Attentional Control
• Life Skills Advocate (2021) – Executive Functioning Skills 101: Flexibility
• Life Skills Advocate (2021) – Executive Functioning Skills 101: Working Memory
• Life Skills Advocate (2022) – What is Executive Functioning?