Concerns continue rising about how much time we’re spending on our smartphones and the effects digital immersion is having on both who we are and what we’re becoming. A new study adds to the uneasiness, suggesting that heavy use of digital media via smartphones and other devices is significantly linked to more symptoms of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) among teens over time.
Researchers monitored nearly 2,600 high school students, ages 15 and 16, over a two-year period and found that the heaviest users of digital media platforms were almost twice as likely to develop ADHD symptoms.
The students reported how frequently they used 14 platforms, including social media, texting and streaming video, and the researchers used their responses to establish three categories of use: no use; medium use and high use. Assessments from the students about their levels of multiple ADHD symptoms were monitored every six months between 2014 and 2016 (from 10th grade to 12th grade). The researchers chose students from several schools throughout Los Angeles County to include a variety of demographic and socioeconomic backgrounds. Students with a preexisting ADHD diagnosis were purposefully excluded from the study to provide as “clean a slate” as possible when evaluating changes in symptoms over time.
The results over the two-year period showed that the most infrequent users of the digital media platforms, about 500 students, had the lowest incidence of ADHD symptoms (4.6 %). In contrast, the most frequent users of the platforms, about 170 students, developed the highest incidence of symptoms (between 9.5% and 10.5%).
"We can't confirm causation from the study, but this was a statistically significant association," said Adam Leventhal, professor of preventive medicine and psychology and director of the USC Health, Emotion and Addiction Laboratory at the Keck School of Medicine of USC. "We can say with confidence that teens who were exposed to higher levels of digital media were significantly more likely to develop ADHD symptoms in the future."
The “causation” question is the question that makes studies like this challenging to translate. We don’t know if exposure to digital media is causing the problem, or if those prone to these disorders are driven to especially heavy use of digital media. A similar problem exists with studies showing that Facebook use is linked to lower well-being and greater feelings of loneliness – is Facebook causing those outcomes, or are lonelier people drawn to heavily using platforms like Facebook?
Earlier internet research may hold part of the answer. When the internet began displacing television as our distraction of choice, researchers wondered what traits may make some people more likely to get sucked into the digital wormhole. Those studies often found a link between the heaviest internet use and various forms of anxiety (providing evidence supporting the “anxiety model” of explaining problematic media use, as opposed to the addiction model).
Because links to anxiety so often surface in these studies, a strong argument has been made that there’s a two-way dynamic at play: higher levels of anxiety drive people to heavier digital media use, and heavy digital media use, in turn, feeds even higher levels of anxiety (more on that connection here). The same may be true of depression and ADHD, where an initial proneness to a condition leads to heavier use of technologies that feed and worsen the condition.
But that, also, is just one theoretical way of explaining these sorts of results. Why digital technologies may fuel these conditions isn’t yet well-understood, although we’re getting clues from brain imaging studies supporting the behavioral correlations.
The researchers note that the results of the latest study show a “statistically significant but modest association between higher frequency of digital media use and subsequent symptoms of ADHD.” Keyword: modest. There’s something here, but the results are more of an inkling of a problem rather than proof of one.
The study has at least one big limitation: the students’ media use and symptoms were self-reported. Relying on people to provide an accurate accounting of their thoughts and behavior over time is always dicey, high school students or otherwise, and tracking something as frenetic as digital media use makes it even more difficult. And since the students were relied upon to self-assess their ADHD symptoms, the results aren't clinically precise.
Having said that, this is still a worthwhile study that deserves attention as at least a marginal warning. Technology is outpacing our ability to track and curtail its effects, and it always will, but it's still essential we try to understand how our digital realities are changing us.
The latest study was published in The Journal of the American Medical Association.