ADHD and Digital Media in Teens

A new study published in the JAMA medical journal revealed that there is a connection between the development of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder symptoms in teenagers and how much they used digital media. The study that linked the disorder to digital media exposure involved 2,587 students in 10 high schools across Los Angeles County in California. When the study started in the fall of 2014, the students were 15 to 16 years old and showed no significant ADHD symptoms. Follow-up data was then collected in the spring and fall of 2015 and 2016. While the results of the study showed a plausible link between ADHD symptoms among teens and their digital media usage, parents should not panic and cut off teenagers from technology. The study did not establish whether digital media causes ADHD symptoms to develop or if teenagers who develop ADHD are more prone to heavy digital media usage.

Ra, C. K., Cho, J., Stone, M. D., De La Cerda, J., Goldenson, N., Moroney, El., Tung, I., Lee, S. S., & Leventhal, A. M. (2018). Association of digital media use with subsequent symptoms of Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder among adolescents. JAMA, 320(3), 255–263. http://dx.doi.org/10.1001/jama.2018.8931

Executive Function Deficits in Kindergartners Predict Later Academic Difficulties

This study investigated whether and to what extent deficits in executive functions (EF) increase kindergarten children’s risk for repeated academic difficulties across elementary school. Findings showed that deficits in EF, particularly in working memory, increased kindergarten children’s risk of experiencing repeated mathematics, reading, and science difficulties across elementary school. These predictive relations replicated across three academic domains following statistical control for domain-specific and -general autoregressors as well as socio-demographic characteristics.

Morgan, P. L., Farkas, G., Wang, Y., Hillemeier, M., Oh, Y., & Maczuga, S. (2018). Executive function deficits in kindergarten predict repeated academic difficulties across elementary school. Early Childhood Research Quarterly, 46(1^st Quarter 2019), 20-32. http://dx./doi.org/10.1016/j.ecresq.2018.06.009