A study, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, has found people who use their phones for at least two hours each day have 10 per cent higher risk of developing attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).
The researchers say it’s possible that social media bombards people with constant information, causing them to take frequent breaks from any tasks they are doing to check their phone.
Professor Elias Aboujaoude, lead author of the study says this means they aren’t allowing their brains to rest and focus on a single task, and the combined distractions can cause adults to develop shorter attention spans and become easily distracted.
“For a long time, the association between ADHD and heavy online use was a chicken-and-egg question in our field: Do people become heavy online consumers because they have ADHD and online life betters suits their attention span, or do they develop ADHD as a result of excessive online consumption?”
It seems they may have an answer after all.
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