Digital devices play a significant role in the learning and living of children and adolescents, whose overuse or addiction has become a global concern. This scoping review seeks to synthesize existing studies to investigate relevant interventions and their effects on digital addiction in children (ages 0–18). To understand the latest advances, we have identified 17 studies published in international peer-reviewed journals between 2018–2022. The findings revealed that, first, most interventions for digital addiction in children and adolescents were cognitive–behavioral therapies (CBT) or CBT-based interventions, which could improve anxiety, depression, and related symptoms of digital addiction. Second, rather than directly targeting addictive behaviors, some family-based interventions aim to strengthen family functions and relationships. Finally, digital-based interventions, such as website-based, application-based, and virtual reality interventions, are promising in adolescent digital addiction interventions. However, these studies shared the same limitations: small sample sizes, short intervention durations, no control group, and nonrandomized assignments. The small sample size problem is difficult to solve by offline intervention. Meanwhile, online digital-based intervention is still in its infancy, resulting in limited generalizability of the findings and the inability to popularize digital intervention. Accordingly, future intervention studies should integrate various assessments and interventions to form an integrated platform to provide interventions for addicted children and adolescents worldwide.

The escalating prevalence of studies investigating digital addiction (DA) and its detrimental impact on the human brain’s structure and functionality has been noticeable in recent years. Yet, an overwhelming majority of these reviews have been predominantly geared towards samples comprising college students or adults and have only inspected a single variant of DA, such as internet gaming disorder, internet addiction disorder, problematic smartphone use, tablet overuse, and so forth. Reviews focusing on young children and adolescents (ages 0–18), or those which amalgamate various types of DA, are decidedly scarce. Given this context, summarizing the effects of DA on brain structure and functionality during the vital developmental stage (0–18 years) is of immense significance. A scoping review, complying with the PRISMA extension for such reviews, was conducted to amalgamate findings from 28 studies spanning a decade (2013–2023) and to examine the influence of assorted forms of DA on the brains of children and adolescents (0–18 years). The synthesized evidence indicated two primary results: (1) DA exerts harmful effects on the structure and functionality of the brains of children and adolescents, and (2) the prefrontal lobe is the region most consistently reported as impacted across all research. Furthermore, this review discerned a notable void of studies investigating the neural indices of digital addiction, along with a shortage of studies focusing on young children (0–6 years old) and longitudinal evidence. This research could provide the necessary theoretical basis for the thwarting and intervention of digital addiction, a measure indispensable for ensuring healthy brain development in children and adolescents.

Music is integrated into daily life when listening to it, playing it, and singing, uniquely modulating brain activity. Functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS), celebrated for its ecological validity, has been used to elucidate this music–brain interaction. This scoping review synthesizes 22 empirical studies using fNIRS to explore the intricate relationship between music and brain function. This synthesis of existing evidence reveals that diverse musical activities, such as listening to music, singing, and playing instruments, evoke unique brain responses influenced by individual traits and musical attributes. A further analysis identifies five key themes, including the effect of passive and active music experiences on relevant human brain areas, lateralization in music perception, individual variations in neural responses, neural synchronization in musical performance, and new insights fNIRS has revealed in these lines of research. While this review highlights the limited focus on specific brain regions and the lack of comparative analyses between musicians and non-musicians, it emphasizes the need for future research to investigate the complex interplay between music and the human brain.

Although there are millions of left-behind children in China, the researches on brain structure and functions in left-behind children are not sufficient at the brain imaging level. This study aimed to explore whether there is decreased prefrontal synchronization during joint attention in left-behind children. Sixty children (65.12 ± 6.54 months, 29 males) with 34 left-behind children were recruited. The functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) imaging data from the prefrontal cortex during joint attention, as well as behavioral measures (associated with family income, intelligence, language, and social-emotional abilities), were collected. Results verified that brain imaging data and behavioral measures are correlative and support that left-behind children have deficits in social-emotional abilities. More importantly, left-behind children showed decreased synchronization strength and asymmetry in the right middle frontal gyrus during joint attention. The findings suggest that decreased right prefrontal synchronization strength and asymmetry during joint attention might be vulnerability factors in the development of left-behind children.

The left-behind phenomenon, caused by parent out-migration, has become a common social issue and might lead to long-term and potential risks for children in rural areas of China. It is important to investigate the effect of social interaction on prefrontal activation of left-behind children in China because of possible effects of parent out-migration on children’s social cognition. We recruited 81 rural Chinese preschoolers aged 52–76 months (mean = 64.98 ± 6.321 months) preschoolers with three different statuses of parental out-migration (including non-, partially, and completely left-behind children). Using functional Near-Infrared Spectroscopy (fNIRS), we compared behavior and brain activation and in three groups (non-, partially-, completely-left-behind children) under two different social interaction conditions (child-teacher and child-stranger situation). Results revealed that initiating joint attention (IJA) may evoke higher brain activation than responding to joint attention (RJA) in the prefrontal cortex (PFC), especially in the case of initiating joint attention with the stranger. In addition, the activation of joint attention was positively correlated with children’s language score, cognitive flexibility, and facial expression recognition. More importantly, partially-left-behind children evoked higher brain activation in the IJA condition and presented a higher language level than completely/non-left-behind children. The current study provides insight into the neural basis of left-behind children’s development and revealed for the first time that family economic level and left-behind status may contribute to the lower social cognition.

Background: Internet addiction (IA) constitutes a significant public health challenge, yet the distinct influence of neurodevelopmental stage and gender on its neural substrates remains under-characterized. This scoping review systematically synthesizes neuroimaging evidence to identify convergent brain alterations across IA subtypes and to disentangle the specific neural signatures associated with age and gender. Methods: Following PRISMA-ScR guidelines, we reviewed peer-reviewed studies published between 2015 and 2025. Searches were conducted across PubMed, Web of Science, and PsycINFO, focusing on investigations that explicitly incorporated age or gender as analytical factors in examining IA-related structural or functional brain changes. Results: The synthesized evidence indicates that IA is consistently associated with abnormal gray matter volume (GMV), compromised white matter integrity (WMI), and functional dysregulation within the prefrontal cortex (PFC), cingulate gyrus, and reward networks. Developmentally, findings reveal distinct trajectories: adolescents exhibit heightened vulnerability in regions governing emotion regulation and executive control, reflecting a developmental mismatch; in contrast, adults display alterations more indicative of established habit formation and reward circuit remodeling. Gender-specific patterns are also evident: males typically manifest neural alterations linked to gaming behaviors and impulse control, whereas females exhibit distinct profiles involving social–emotional processing networks. Conclusion: These findings confirm that IA pathology is not uniform but is significantly modulated by demographic factors. The evidence highlights the necessity of shifting from generalized approaches to prevention and intervention strategies that are tailored to specific developmental windows and gender profiles. Future research must prioritize longitudinal and multimodal designs to move from descriptive mapping to causal mechanistic understanding.