Screen Schooled: Two Veteran Teachers Expose How Technology Overuse Is Making Our Kids Dumber

by Joe Clement

In the United States the amount of time spent gaming averages eight times higher for boys than for girls. Girls tend to spend more time on social media and texting. Along with its more addictive nature, gaming seems to have a more negative cognitive impact than social media. A study published by the American Academy of Pediatrics found that people who spend more time playing video games have more attention problems, and individuals who are more impulsive or have more attention problems subsequently spend more time playing video games. This study also found that video game addicts are twice as likely to have ADD or ADHD. This could help explain the recent explosion of diagnosed attention disorders. A 41 percent increase of ADHD diagnoses in the last decade has disproportionately impacted boys. Now, one out of five boys is diagnosed with ADHD and 85 percent of all attention-related medications are prescribed for boys in the United States. So much for the claims that video games help improve a child’s ability to focus.