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Does Technology Help or Hurt Children with ADHD?

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We live in the era where smartphones and tablets take a great part in our everyday life. As a parent of a child with ADHD, you may have some concerns about the influence of the technology on your child’s health, but some of the benefits can really surprise you.

The adults are not the only ones who have their own tablet or laptop, about 64% of children get their own smartphones when they are ten years old.

Despite all the negative feedback you may hear about the technology impact, disconnect your ADHD child permanently from different types of technology will be a wrong decision. Such forms of communication as emails, social media, chatting are essential for our social development. Think about your child's future. In order to get employed after graduation, your child has to be a confident user of nowadays technologies.

We prepared some researcher on this topic, which may help you to maintain your ADHD child socially active without damages.

Attention Aspects

Digital assistants make our lives easier. You can have an access to the information within a few seconds. Video games contain photorealistic graphics which creates a whole new world inside of the player's head. For children with ADHD, the digital world makes household chores or homework like unbearably slow pace.

Due to different reasons, ADHD children are very captivated by digital technologies. The author of The Elephant in the Living Room: Make Television Work for Your Kids, Dr. Dimitri Christakis, explains that screen-based technologies may cause attention problems for children. In his researches, he shows that there is a relation between the children, who watch television by age three and the attention problems they have by the age seven. However, the activities as singing and reading before age three reduce the possibility of arising attention problems by age seven.

Social influence

According to study which was published in 2014 in Computers in Human Behavior, children who had a 5-day break from the screen-based technologies provided better recognition of non-verbal expressions. Unfortunately, children with ADHD have more difficulties with bounding social relation than non-ADHD children. Try to give your ADHD child some time without digital technologies, you will see that he/she will develop their ability to connect with others.

Also, the sleep cycle will be in order, when the blue light from their smartphones, computers, television is not affecting them all the time.

Technology’s benefits

Nowadays, researchers are discovering that besides the negative effects there are some upsides.

In the article by ADHD expert Dr. Thomas E. Brown we can find that children with ADHD tend to have more difficulties managing their emotions than non-ADHD children. The digital technologies may provoke their hyperactive tendencies at any time. However, there are some technologies that have a calming effect, and influence children's anxiety in a good way.

Interesting apps, like uper Stretch Yoga, helps children to relax their body and mind. When children don't have an opportunity of going outside, Toca Nature provides ADHD children with a perfect chance to create their own virtual outdoor world.

Don't miss the possibility to find apps that make the life of ADHD children easier.

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