Los Angeles – Does the Intensive Use of Digital Media by Adolescents Promote the Development of Deficit Disorder? Attention / hyperactivity (ADHD)? A longitudinal study of América Ärzteblatt ( JAMA 2018; 320: 255-263) provides the strongest evidence to date but can not prove causality.
Digital media undoubtedly have a high potential for distraction. The user is constantly bombarded with SMS, it is asked several times a day to respond to new messages on social networks or to accept or decline an invitation to a video game. The danger of being unable to concentrate on work is then high at all ages.
Young people may be particularly vulnerable because they are looking for a social identity and are therefore more open to new contacts than others. In extreme cases, teens courier services will communicate with dozens of other people at the same time. In addition, the ability to focus on one thing could be lost and teens could constantly turn to new topics with increased impulsiveness.
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Digital media is therefore suspected of having an attention deficit / hyperactivity disorder (ADHD)). In recent years, many studies have been conducted on this topic. Most, however, were only cross-sectional studies that compared the media use of ADHD patients and other adolescents. A cause-and-effect relationship can not be established with this approach
Longitudinal studies that accompany a group of healthy adolescents over a longer period and correlate media consumption at the beginning of the study with subsequent new cases are more convincing. The results of such a study are now presented by researchers from the Keck School of Medicine in Los Angeles
Deutsches Ärzteblatt print
The study on happiness and health involved 10 schools in Los Angeles and surrounding area. For more than two years, the Grade 10 and later Grade 11 students completed detailed questionnaires about their recreational habits. Among other things, they were also asked to use a total of 14 digital media. There was also a questionnaire for each of the 9 symptoms of inattention and hyperactivity / impulsivity.
The team led by Adam Leventhal has now continued to use digital media among the 2,587 participants, who were not outstanding at the start of the study. Relationship between ADHD symptoms
The results are clear: while of the 495 children who rarely used social media, 4.6% developed symptoms of ADHD, the 114 children used 7 media intensively. 9.5%. Of the 51 children who use all platforms intensively, no less than 10.5% had new ADHD symptoms
Even statistically, the results were significant. Leventhal estimates a probability ratio of 1.11 with a 95% confidence interval of 1.06 to 1.16 for each additional digital media activity. A covariate badysis, which took into account the useful life of each medium, did not change the context (odds ratio 1.10, 1.05-1.15).
Nevertheless, the results do not prove that intensive use of digital media for ADHD symptoms are responsible. Even in a long-term study, it can not be ruled out that ADHD is at the beginning and that the more intensive use of digital media is the result of the disease. A central feature of ADHD is the search for distractions, which can be easily exploited by digital media (reverse causality). The use of media and ADHD could also have common roots. It is conceivable that parents who suffer ADHD themselves and who inherited the disorder from their children are less educated, while parents without ADHD spend stricter domestic rules on the use of digital media
