NCT06817993: TBO-II

Teen Brain Online II: Understanding How Social Media Affects the Teen Brain

Recruiting now NA Last updated 4 May 2025

What this trial tests

NA trial testing Rejection and Acceptance Feedback in Depression in 60 participants. Currently enrolling.

Timeline

21 March 2025

Primary endpoint
30 August 2026

30 August 2026

Quick facts

Lead sponsor	University of Pittsburgh
Phase	NA
Status	Recruiting now
Study type	INTERVENTIONAL
Allocation	na
Design	single group
Masking	none
Primary purpose	basic science
Enrollment	60
Start date	21 March 2025
Primary completion	30 August 2026
Estimated completion	30 August 2026
Sites	1 location across United States

Drugs / interventions tested

• Rejection and Acceptance Feedback

Conditions studied

• Depression — all drugs for Depression →

Sponsor

University of Pittsburgh

Who can join

Adults 13 to 17, any sex, with Depression. Patients with the condition only — healthy volunteers not accepted.

Sponsor's own description

There has been much interest in the potential role of social media (SM) use in driving a current mental health crisis among teens, with a dire need for evidence that goes beyond self-report. One important avenue is to understand the role of the brain in driving the effects of SM use on emotional health and vice versa. However, there is almost no research addressing these questions, largely due to a lack of tasks that can probe the neural correlates of modern SM use. The goal of this clinical trial is to develop and validate a new developmentally-appropriate and ecologically-valid functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and eyetracking task, the TeenBrainOnline (TBO) Task, that is more realistic and similar to modern SM platforms. Participants will be 50 teens (ages 13-17) with depressive symptoms who will complete the final version of TBO task during fMRI with eye-tracking, an older Chatroom Interact (CHAT-I) Task, daily surveys of SM use, and measures of depressive symptoms. Our goal is to show that the task works by:

* Demonstrating that it activates expected regions of the brain and visual attention biases toward feedback cues.
* Showing that brain and eyetracking (visual attention) activity on the task explain variability in depressive symptoms at baseline and three months later, and work better than similar indices from an older task.
* Showing that brain and eyetracking (visual attention) activity on the task are associated with real-world measures of social media use collected during daily surveys. Specifically, The investigators expect that teens whose brain and eyetracking activity suggests they are more sensitive to feedback on SM will report a social evaluation orientation toward social media use in daily life, such as engaging a lot in social comparison, worrying about missing out, and caring about getting a lot of likes and comments.

Participants will be asked to:

* complete a 10-15 minute screening call to determine eligibility for the study
* complete one 90 minute virtual study visit to complete questionnaires and prepare for the MRI visit (visit 1)
* submit 24 photos to our study specific social media site
* complete an (in person) MRI scan visit (\~4 hours), which consists of 2 tasks where they will interact with peers (visit 2)
* complete \~5 minute smartphone surveys 3 times a day for 16 days, asking about their daily experiences online and emotional reactions.
* complete 2 online questionnaires asynchronously 3 months after their scan date

Publications & conference data

No peer-reviewed publications indexed yet for this trial.