Can too much screen time CAUSE ADD and ADHD??

Can too much screen time destroy your kid's attention span, or even give them ADHD?  A new study found that yes, it might be possible.

Researchers tracked about 2,600 tenth graders for two years.  They only picked kids who didn't show any signs of ADHD when the study started.

Then they checked in on them two years later, and about 5% of them had symptoms of it.  But some groups were more likely to have symptoms than others.

Kids who texted a lot were 21% more likely to show signs of ADHD.  Kids who watched a ton of streaming video were 45% more likely.  And the kids who used social media the most were 53% more likely to have ADHD symptoms.

Don't freak out yet though.  The study didn't prove those things necessarily CAUSED their attention spans to shrink.  It just found a link.  (It's the whole causation vs. correlation argument.)

Plus, the study was pretty small.  And even though almost all of the kids they looked at spent a ton of time staring at screens, 95% of them DIDN'T end up with ADHD. 

Photo: getty images