Parents raising children diagnosed with some kind of attention deficit disorder (ADD) already know that television and video games are the biggest pacifiers you can find. But now some mental health experts are claiming that technology and its addictive properties may be a contributing factor to developing ADD thanks to a breakdown of interpersonal relationships.
According to an article in the San Francisco Chronicle, Dr. Elias Aboujaoude, director of Stanford University's Impulse Control Disorders Clinic at Stanford University, is worried about the future, saying that we're heading down a dark path if our attention span decreases to a point where we can only take in 140 characters at a time.
"The more we become used to just sound bites and tweets," Aboujaoude said, "the less patient we will be with more complex, more meaningful information. And I do think we might lose the ability to analyze things with any depth and nuance. Like any skill, if you don't use it, you lose it."
Another health expert calls the problem "acquired attention deficit disorder" because technology is rewiring the modern brain. He even added that we're short-circuiting our brains by using spell-checkers or contact lists that sore telephone numbers.
The article even goes on to describe one woman who must drink a glass a wine to ease her anxiety from being away from the computer. Manish Rathi, co-founder of Retrevo.com conducted a survey and discovered that many people also jump onto Facebook and Twitter after sex. "It's the new cigarette," Rathi said.
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