By John Rosemond – Tribune News Service
Psychologist, writer, and professor Russell Barkley, widely regarded as one of America’s leading ADHD experts, used to (and as far as I know) ridicule me in his public presentations, claiming that I have ADHD for television reasons. I’ve never said anything like it.
I’ve argued, and still do, that spending 3 to 5 hours a day watching TV (the average young American average) negatively affects brain development. This has no compatibility with the official narrative about ADHD; then Russell Barkley laughs at me. (It’s vital to note that Barkley is said to be on the payroll of several pharmaceutical companies. )
Around 1980, I proposed that the constant flickering of a television screen could disable a child’s ability to remain focused on an immutable visual picture (e. g. , a book), which is why, before television, ADHD symptoms were rare. As studies show, a short attention span is linked to impulsivity, a child who spends a disproportionate amount of time in front of a blink box has a greater threat of behavioral problems.
Apparently, Barkley would laugh a lot at his mockery, which included the misleading use of my calling and the word “Scientology” in the same sentence. Never has the brain that falsified studies found that television is taken at the typical speed of the average American child is strongly related to certain diagnostic characteristics of ADHD (exactly what I proposed around 1980).
Screen media has proliferated in the last 20 years and its ubiquity in the lives of children is problematic. In recent weeks, for example, the media has been filled with stories about the so-called “Tik-Tok brain,” which researchers say is a verifiable neurological condition induced in teenagers, basically girls, who are obsessive consumers of the popular social networking site.
Thus, screen media can instill measurable adjustments in the still-emerging (i. e. , vulnerable) brains of young people and adolescents, adjustments that lead to problematic behaviors.
When I first came up with my hilarious theory, TVs were the only screens in kids’ lives (if you don’t count Etch A Sketches). Now, even from a young age, children have smartphones, private computers, tablets, and videos. games. And they sit, mesmerized, in front of the blink for about 25 hours a week, or 1,300 hours a year, or more than 5,000 hours before arriving in the first year.
Women who taught first through third grade from the early to mid-1950s, before television became a staple in the American home, unanimously told me that “we didn’t have this problem,” i. e. , ADHD, which is why can an instructor simply be a first-grade class of 95 children at the time?No, I’m not kidding. It was in Allentown, Pennsylvania, in the mid-1950s.
You don’t have to be a space scientist to gather the data. First, researchers have found that screen-based devices can induce measurable adjustments in the vulnerable brains of young people and adolescents. Second, before the near-universal appearance of television in the home, ADHD symptoms were rare in American classrooms. Third, as screen-based devices are more common in children’s lives, intellectual fitness problems are more common.
Bottom Line: Whenever possible, keep kids away from screen devices. Impressive!
By John Rosemon
Gallery Press Office
Visit family circle psychologist John Rosemond’s online page in www. johnrosemond. com; readers can send an email to [email protected]; due to the volume of mail, not all questions will be answered.
Visit family circle psychologist John Rosemond’s online page in www. johnrosemond. com; readers can send an email to [email protected]; due to the volume of mail, not all questions will be answered.
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