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A professional psychiatrist once told me “It’s the screens, stupid.” This guy worked in a lot of different places and he noticed urban areas where the kids were

A professional psychiatrist once told me “It’s the screens, stupid.” This guy worked in a lot of different places and he noticed urban areas where the kids were always on the iPad and tv had noticeably worse and more cases of ADHD than remote areas he worked. It’s only anecdotal but thought worth sharing.

deleted 4y ago
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awesomeMilou 4y ago
It makes sense both logically and intuitively, and there's research to back up his claim. The question is what conclusion to draw from it. It's pretty easy to dismiss children who's parents didn't give a shit about enforcing proper screen times at that then subsequently developed an attention deficit by rigorous conditioning as lazy. And it's a convenient avenue for gatekeeping in education. It just makes sense: if you condition a developing brain to never expect anything other than instant gratification, you obviously have no neural pathways that can deal with a regular workload. There's a reason the chinese government is so harsh in terms of policing kids screentime nationally. Kids show similar symptoms to ADHD after consuming TikTok for a while. To be clear, I'm not advocating for any archaic educational policies, like not giving your kids a smartphone until they get bullied by their peers for not having one. I'm just pissed that boomers completely missed teaching this generation some media literacy (because they don't know it either) and now act suprised when their kids grow up with this kind of deficit.
- glass3 4y ago
  Children in front of a screen are essentially alone. It doesn't have to be a surplus in instant gratification but could as well be a deficit in human interaction.
- viraptor 4y ago
  > and there's research to back up his claim That's a good chance to link it. > you obviously have no neural pathways that can deal with a regular workload And that's a really bad description for ADHD where, no, you absolutely do. And it's not about "regular workload".
amf12 4y ago
Correlation is not causation. It's also likely that there was more awareness in urban areas, access to mental healthcare, schools that could look for ADHD synonyms. Moreover, ADHD was also a thing 30 years ago when there weren't any screens; it just wasn't diagnosed. There are many people who got diagnosed in adulthood. One of the key diagnostic criteria for adults is: the symptoms should have been present since childhood. Let me tell you this, many adults who got diagnosed late, absolutely had these symptoms as kids and have a lot of secondary psychological conditions due to undiagnosed ADHD.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

awesomeMilou 4y ago

It makes sense both logically and intuitively, and there's research to back up his claim. The question is what conclusion to draw from it. It's pretty easy to dismiss children who's parents didn't give a shit about enforcing proper screen times at that then subsequently developed an attention deficit by rigorous conditioning as lazy. And it's a convenient avenue for gatekeeping in education. It just makes sense: if you condition a developing brain to never expect anything other than instant gratification, you obviously have no neural pathways that can deal with a regular workload. There's a reason the chinese government is so harsh in terms of policing kids screentime nationally. Kids show similar symptoms to ADHD after consuming TikTok for a while. To be clear, I'm not advocating for any archaic educational policies, like not giving your kids a smartphone until they get bullied by their peers for not having one. I'm just pissed that boomers completely missed teaching this generation some media literacy (because they don't know it either) and now act suprised when their kids grow up with this kind of deficit.

glass3 4y ago
Children in front of a screen are essentially alone. It doesn't have to be a surplus in instant gratification but could as well be a deficit in human interaction.
viraptor 4y ago
> and there's research to back up his claim That's a good chance to link it. > you obviously have no neural pathways that can deal with a regular workload And that's a really bad description for ADHD where, no, you absolutely do. And it's not about "regular workload".

amf12 4y ago

Correlation is not causation. It's also likely that there was more awareness in urban areas, access to mental healthcare, schools that could look for ADHD synonyms. Moreover, ADHD was also a thing 30 years ago when there weren't any screens; it just wasn't diagnosed. There are many people who got diagnosed in adulthood. One of the key diagnostic criteria for adults is: the symptoms should have been present since childhood. Let me tell you this, many adults who got diagnosed late, absolutely had these symptoms as kids and have a lot of secondary psychological conditions due to undiagnosed ADHD.