人工智能和社交媒體如何導致「腦殘廢」（2/2）

Recently the New York Times reported the following:

How A.I. and Social Media Contribute to ‘Brain Rot’ (2/2)

A.I. search tools, chatbots and social media are associated with lower cognitive performance, studies say. What to do?

By Brian X. Chen (Brian X. Chen is The Times’s lead consumer technology writer and the author of Tech Fix, a column about the social implications of the tech we use.)

Nov. 6, 2025

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Though the study focused on essay writing, Dr. Kosmyna said she worried about the implications for people using A.I. chatbots in fields where retention is essential, like a pilot studying to get a license. More research urgently needs to be done, she said, on how A.I. affects people’s ability to hold on to information.

Social media may be linked to lower reading scores.

Over the last two years, schools in states like New York, Indiana, Louisiana and Florida have raced to ban cellphones from classrooms, citing concerns that students were distracting themselves with social media apps like TikTok and Instagram. Lending credence to the bans, a study published last month found a potent link between social media use and poorer cognitive performance.

Last month, the medical journal JAMA published a study conducted by the University of California, San Francisco. Dr. Jason Nagata, a pediatrician who led the study, and his colleagues looked at data from ABCD, for Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development, a research project that followed more than 6,500 youths from age 9 to 13 from 2016 to 2018.

All the children were surveyed once a year on how much time they used social media. Every other year, they took several tests. For example, a visual vocabulary test involved correctly matching pictures to words they heard.

The data showed that children who reported using a low amount of social media (one hour a day) to a high amount (at least three hours a day) scored significantly lower on reading, memory and vocabulary tests than children who reported using no social media.

As for why social media apps like TikTok and Instagram would harm test scores, the only safe conclusion is that every hour a child spends scrolling through the apps takes time away from more enriching activities like reading and sleeping, Dr. Nagata said.

What are some healthier ways to use social media and A.I.?

Despite findings of a correlation between social media use and cognitive decline, it would be difficult to recommend an ideal amount of screen time for youths, because lots of children spend time in front of screens doing things unrelated to social media, like watching TV shows, Dr. Nagata said.

Instead, he suggested that parents enforce screen-free zones, prohibiting phone use in areas like the bedroom and dinner table so that children can stay focused on their studies, sleep and mealtimes.

Meta did not respond to a request for comment. A TikTok spokeswoman referred to a webpage with instructions to set up Time Away, a tool for parents to create schedules for when their teenagers are allowed to use TikTok.

As for A.I. chatbots, there was an interesting wrinkle in the M.I.T. study that presented a possible solution on how people could best use chatbots to learn and write.

Eventually, the groups in that study swapped roles: The people who relied only on their brains to write got to use ChatGPT, and the people who had relied on ChatGPT could use only their brains. All the students wrote essays on the same topics they had chosen before.

The students who had originally relied only on their brains recorded the highest brain activity once they were allowed to use ChatGPT. The students who had initially used ChatGPT, on the other hand, were never on a par with the former group when they were restricted to using their brains, Dr. Kosmyna said.

That suggests that people who are eager to use chatbots for writing and learning should consider starting the process on their own before turning to the A.I. tools later in the process for revisions, similar to math students using calculators to solve problems only after they have used pencil and paper to learn the formulas and equations. Both Google and OpenAI declined to comment.

Dr. Melumad, the Wharton professor who led the earlier study involving A.I. search tools, said the problem with those tools was that they transformed what was once an active process in your brain — perusing through links and clicking on a credible source to read — into a passive one by automating all of that.

So perhaps the key to using A.I. in a healthier way, she said, is to try to be more mindful in how we use them. Rather than ask a chatbot to do all the research on a broad topic, Dr. Melumad said, use it as a part of your research process to answer small questions, such as looking up historical dates. But for deeper learning of a subject, consider reading a book.

Translation

人工智能和社交媒體如何導致「腦殘廢」（2/2）

研究表明，人工智能搜尋工具、聊天機器人和社交媒體與認知能力下降有關。我們該怎麼辦？

（繼續）

儘管這項研究的重點是論文寫作，但Kosmyna士表示，她擔心人工智能聊天機器人對那些在記憶力至關重要的領域（例如飛行員考取執照）使用人工智能聊天機器人的人們會產生影響。她說，迫切需要進行更多關於人工智能如何影響人們保有資訊能力的研究。

社交媒體可能與閱讀成績下降有關。

過去兩年，紐約州、印第安納州、路易斯安那州和佛羅裡達州等地的學校紛紛禁止學生在課堂上使用手機，理由是擔心學生會沉迷於TikTok和Instagram等社交媒體應用而分心。一項上個月發表的研究也印證了這些禁令的合理性，該研究發現社交媒體的使用與認知能力下降之間存在密切關係。

上個月，醫學期刊《美國醫學會雜誌》（JAMA）發表了一項由加州大學舊金山分校進行的研究。該研究的負責人、兒科醫生Jason Nagata博士及其同事分析了「青少年大腦認知發展」（ABCD）計劃的數據。此計劃追蹤了2016年至2018年間6,500多名9至13歲的青少年。

所有兒童每年都會接受一次關於他們使用社交媒體的時間有多少的調查。每隔一年，他們還會參加幾項測驗。例如，一項視覺詞彙測試要求他們將圖片與聽到的單字正確匹配。

數據顯示，使用社交媒體時間較短（每天一小時）到較長（每天至少三小時）的兒童，在閱讀、記憶和詞彙測驗中的得分均顯著低於不使用社交媒體的兒童。

至於TikTok和Instagram等社交媒體應用程式為何會影響測驗成績，Nagata博士表示，唯一合理的解釋是，孩子每花一個小時瀏覽這些應用，就會減少他們進行閱讀和睡眠等更有益活動的時間。

有哪些方式會更健康地使用社交媒體和人工智能呢？

Nagata博士指出，儘管有研究發現社交媒體使用與認知能力下降之間存在關係，但很難為青少年推薦理想的螢幕使用時間，因為許多孩子在螢幕前做的事情與社交媒體無關，例如看電視節目。

他建議家長設立“不用螢幕區域”，禁止在臥室和餐桌等區域使用手機，以便孩子可以專注於學習、睡眠和用餐。

Meta公司未對此置評。 TikTok 的一位發言人提到了一個網頁，上面有設定 Time Away 的說明。 Time Away 是讓家長為青少年設定可使用TikTok的時間表的工具。

至於人工智能聊天機器人，麻省理工學院的一項研究提出了一個有趣的發現，該研究探討如何更好地利用聊天機器人來學習和寫作。

最終，研究中的兩組學生互換了角色：原本只依靠大腦寫作的學生可以使用 ChatGPT，而之前依賴 ChatGPT 的學生則只能依靠大腦寫作。所有學生都就先前選擇了的相同主題撰寫了文章。

Kosmyna博士表示，最初只依靠大腦寫作的學生在被允許使用 ChatGPT 後，大腦活動量最高。而最初使用 ChatGPT 的學生，在被限制只能依靠大腦寫作後，大腦活動量始終無法與先前那組學生相提並論。

這表明，那些渴望使用聊天機器人進行寫作和學習的人，應該先嘗試獨立完成寫作和學習過程，然後再藉助人工智能工具進行修改，就像數學學生只有在用紙筆學習公式和方程式之後，才會使用計算器解題一樣。谷歌和OpenAI均拒絕置評。

華頓商學院教授Melumad博士曾領導一項關於人工智能搜尋工具的早期研究曾指出，這些工具的問題在於，它們將原本大腦中主動思考的過程 - 瀏覽連結、點擊可靠的來源進行閱讀 - 全自動化了成為一個被動的過程。

因此，她認為，更健康地使用人工智能的關鍵或許在於，我們應該更謹慎地使用它們。Melumad博士建議，與其讓聊天機器人完成對某個廣泛主題的全部研究，不如將其作為研究過程的一部分，用來回答一些小問題，例如尋找歷史日期。但如果想要更深入了解某個主題，不妨考慮閱讀書籍。

 So, a professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania gave a group of 250 people a simple writing assignment. This experiment, like other academic studies published so far on A.I.’s effects on the brain, found that people who relied heavily on chatbots and A.I. search tools for tasks like writing essays and research were generally performing worse than people who didn’t use them. The problem with those tools is that they transform what is once an active process in the brain into a passive one by automating all of that. Apparently, the key to using A.I. in a healthier way is to try to be more mindful in how we should use them.