The Effects of Smartphones and Social Media on People's Health - Second Edition

Your smartphone is the most powerful health tool you own — and one of the most dangerous.In a world where the average person touches their phone over 600 times a day, the boundary between digital convenience and digital dependency has all but disappeared. The Effect of Smartphones and Social Media on People's Health is the definitive evidence-based examination of what constant connectivity is doing to the human body, mind, and soul — and what we can do about it.Drawing on the most current peer-reviewed research from 2020 through 2025 — including landmark studies from NEJM AI, The Lancet, JAMA Network Open, and the NIH's Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study tracking 11,875 children — Dr. Amdy Diene delivers a rigorous, honest, and deeply human account of digital technology's health consequences across ten comprehensive chapters:How social media algorithms exploit dopamine reward circuits to engineer compulsive behavior — and what the neuroimaging evidence reveals about structural brain changes in heavy usersThe physical toll of text neck syndrome, digital eye strain (now affecting 66% of device users globally), and blue-light-disrupted sleepWhy adolescents spending more than 3 hours daily on social media face double the risk of depression and anxiety — and what the first large-scale causal RCT evidence shows about recoveryHow body image disturbances have systematically worsened between 2015 and 2022, tracking precisely with the rise of TikTok and image-centric platformsThe cognitive cost of constant connectivity — and how blocking mobile internet for just two weeks restored sustained attention equivalent to being ten years youngerThe extraordinary promise of AI mental health chatbots, digital therapeutics, and the emerging science of digital wellness This is not a book that demonizes technology. It is a book that takes it seriously — the benefits and the harms alike — and equips readers with the evidence and strategies to live better in a digitally connected world.Essential reading for parents, clinicians, educators, policymakers, researchers, and anyone seeking to understand and reclaim their relationship with technology.Second Edition — 2026 Touba Consulting & Publishing Read more