The  Technology Page:

Reclaiming Focus - Is screen time mimicking ADHD symptoms in kids?

According to the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia Research Institute, "ADHD is the most common neurodevelopment disorder of childhood, occurring in five to eight per cent of school-age children. "There are three different ways ADHD can present itself as predominantly inattentive, predominantly hyperactive-impulsive, or combined. 

Some symptoms of ADHD include but are not limited to difficulty staying focused, being easily distracted, having difficulty working or playing quietly, being hyperactive, impulsive and more. 

But how does screen time impact symptoms of ADHD? According to OECD data collected in 2018, New Zealand's youth used their digital devices on average 42 hours per week, whereas globally, it was 35 hours. Since then, studies have shown that screen use among children has risen, says Karen Campbell, founder of Child Behaviour Service NZ. 

While technology and screens are useful educational tools, teachers and parents need to understand the underlying impacts that excessive screen time and social media consumption can have on our youth. 

"You can use the internet for knowledge, and all those sorts of things and learning guided by the teacher, so that can be a really effective tool, but what has actually ended up happening is that instead, we kind of went, "here you go, kids, use these devices", and we haven't fully understood the consequences of that.

"Increased screen time has been linked to four fundamental negative effects in children, including those with ADHD: addiction, attention fragmentation, sleep deprivation and social deprivation. "Children need face-to-face contact, to be in teams, to participate in different activities, to engage in physical activity, and to have opportunities to create and take risks. This builds neural pathways in the brain. Each hour of screen time deprives them of this. 

Karen says that because children with ADHD have traits that make it difficult for them to manage impulsivity, focus, and attention span, "the research around what technology is doing to kids brains is going to be exacerbated for children with ADHD because they already have that existing difficulty with impulsivity and difficulty focusing. "I also sometimes think that ADHD is way overdiagnosed currently, and research informs us that prolonged time on phones and the sleep deprivation caused by phones mimic ADHD symptoms."

Karen quotes Johnathon Haidt (The Anxious Generation, 2024), who believes one way to help combat the negative impacts of social media and screen time not only for children is "raising the age of internet use to 16 as that is beyond what may be the most sensitive period for harm from social media, 11 to 15 for girls and 14 to 15 years old for boys. "More children have difficulty with reading books or long pieces of text because they have trained their brains to just look at snippets of information, and they have not developed what we call reading stamina." 

Karen would also encourage parents to delay their children's smartphone access for as long as feasible, understanding that peer pressure exists. "If parents and schools were collectively able to work together with boundaries, then this would be preferable so that single children don't feel like they are missing out."