Children today love screens. Put a hyperactive little boy in front of an HDTV with a cartoon or video game playing and you bet that he will be completely still and attentive, too busy absorbing the action to notice anything else. Teenagers can't seem to tear themselves away from their computers and mobile phones - their eyes stay glued to the screen even while walking or driving. The irony is that while video games, TV shows, and digital media can capture one's attention for hours, they may also be responsible for eroding a person's ability to pay attention and stay focused once they're back in the real world. Can too much technology cause ADHD?
The rising numbers of ADHD diagnoses in children coincide with the continuous development of media and technology. Children today spend far more time interacting with screens than children five years ago. A study from the Kaiser Family Foundation's 2010 report discovered that children between the ages 8 - 18 spend at least 7 hours and 38 minutes each day consuming entertainment media. Meanwhile, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reveal that 7% of children from this age group are diagnosed with ADHD.
While no one can say for sure if the rising ADHD diagnoses are caused by technology, researchers observed that too much media exposure does indeed rewire the brain and cause noticeable detrimental effects. A study published in Pediatrics looked at the viewing habits of 1,323 from the third to fifth grade over a period of 13 months. The authors noted that children who spent over 2 hours playing video games or watching television were at least 1.6 times more likely to have low attention spans. The same study also discovered that exposure to "screen media" is linked to poor attention in 210 college students.
Experts who have spent their time studying the effects of entertainment on children's mental processing believe that overstimulation from technology may contribute to the onset of ADHD. One study shows that children under the age of 5 who watched at least 2 hours of television daily were 20% more likely to have attention problems. While the researchers did not take note of the shows the children viewed, they believe that the content isn't the culprit. Rather, the fast-paced nature of most cartoons and TV shows may affect a child's normal brain development. The brain grows most rapidly during the first two to three years of life, and anything can affect the development of their brains. Studies on newborn rats revealed that being exposed to different types of visual stimuli can affect the structure of their brain. If a child is overstimulated during this critical period, he or she runs the risk of having shorter attention spans and developing habits that increase the severity of ADHD.
Other experts worry that teens and adults may be headed down a dark path because of the advent of social media and the internet. The term "acquired attention disorder" is used to describe how technology rewires the modern brain. Because of spell-checkers, contact lists that automatically alphabetize names, and 140-character tweets, these experts fear that the average modern adult will become less patient with more meaningful and complex information. And with this comes the inability to analyze concepts and ideas with depth.
While there's certainly no need to chuck out the TV set or computer, you can reduce the risk of overstimulation in your child by limiting his or her screen time to less than 2 hours a day. Encourage your child to take up sports, exercise, or play in the park with friends. Parent-child activities like reading together or taking trips to a children's museum are also linked to improved attention spans later in life.
Dr. Yannick Pauli is an expert on natural approaches to ADHD and the author of the popular self-help home-program The Unritalin Solution. He is Director of the Centre Neurofit in Lausanne, Switzerland and has a passion taking care of children with ADHD. Click on the link for more great information about what is ADHD.
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