A US study finds that increased problematic social media use among adolescents, especially boys, may be followed by modest rises in ADHD symptoms, prompting calls for further research into online behaviour and attention issues.
A large U.S. study has found that rises in problematic social media use among adolescents were followed by small increases in symptoms linked to attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, with the strongest pattern seen in boys, according to research published in JAMA Network Open.
The work, led by Jason Nagata of the University of California, San Francisco, examined 11,286 young people taking part in the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development study, a long-running project following children from 21 sites across the United States. The participants were about 12 years old on average at the second wave of data collection, and just over half were boys. Problematic social media use was measured through self-reports using the Social Media Addiction Questionnaire, while parents reported ADHD symptoms through the Child Behaviour Checklist.
Researchers tracked the group across five annual assessments and used statistical methods designed to separate changes within the same child from differences between children. They found that adolescents who reported higher-than-usual problematic social media use were more likely to show slightly higher ADHD symptoms the following year. The association appeared most clearly from one annual survey period to the next near the end of the study, suggesting that heavier or more troubling use of social platforms tended to come before a modest rise in attention-related symptoms.
The reverse pattern was weaker. ADHD symptoms were linked to later problematic social media use only once in the analysis and the relationship was inconsistent overall. The study also found a stronger association in boys, while no significant link was detected in girls. Even so, the authors stressed that the effect sizes were small and that the findings do not prove social media use causes ADHD.
That caution matters, particularly because the study relied on parent-reported symptoms rather than clinical diagnoses and drew heavily from White families with relatively higher incomes, which may limit how far the results apply to all adolescents. The annual survey design may also have missed shorter-term shifts in online behaviour. Still, the researchers said problematic social media use may be worth considering when clinicians and parents are assessing attention problems in teenagers, especially boys, while calling for studies that use more frequent and more objective measures of social media activity.
Disclaimer: This content is for informational purposes only and is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical judgment, advice, diagnosis, or treatment.
