The roles of delayed cortical maturation and lower anticipatory reward activation in predicting addictive screen use in youth

Addictive screen use (ASU), above and beyond screen time, has been linked to significant mental health risks. Yet, little is known about the neural risk factors that may associate with ASU. We examined two neurodevelopmental factors—cognitive control and reward—highlighted in substance use research and their links to ASU. We utilized resting-state and monetary incentive delay (MID) task fMRI data from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study® at baseline (Y0; ages 9-10) to predict addictive videogaming, addictive social media use, addictive phone use, and a composite measure of ASU at year two follow-up (Y2; ages 11-12). Cortical connectomic maturation was operationalized as distance from early-life and proximity to adult functional networks in an individual connectome to potentially index cognitive control development. This was supplemented by also assessing cognitive task performance. Nucleus Accumbens (NAc) activation in anticipation of reward in the MID task was used to assess reward processing. Above and beyond total screen time and attention problems, lower connectomic maturation at Y0 associated with Y2 higher ASU composite and addictive videogaming. Analyses including task performance indicated cortical maturation was associated with both ASU and task performance, but we did not find cognitive task performance to be directly related to ASU. Additionally, lower NAc anticipatory reward activation at Y0 was very weakly associated with higher Y2 ASU. Delayed cortical network maturation and, to a lesser extent, lower anticipatory reward activation in 9-to-10-year-olds may be associated with addictive screen use in early adolescence, above-and-beyond parent-reported attention problems.