Giving Compass' Take:

• Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) released a study that shows increased internet activity can put young people at risk or increase their chances of developing ADHD symptoms. 

• What steps can parents take to decrease children's screen time? How can tech companies help to limit screen use through applications/design of technology products? 

• Read about the tech companies that are trying to battle young people's addiction to technology. 

It's near impossible to stay focused when the internet is at our fingertips. There's always one more notification to read, one more deal to be had, one more like to chase.

While some experts have suspected that this kind of instant feedback and gratification might negatively affect young minds, a new study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) suggests such connectivity comes at a worrisome cost by increasing ADHD symptoms in teens who use digital media at a high rate.

When researchers surveyed 2,587 high school students in a prospective, longitudinal study, they found that teens who engaged in 14 different digital media activities multiple times a day had increased odds of developing ADHD symptoms.

The activities included checking social media sites, texting, online chatting, and posting one's own photos, videos, blogs, or status updates. More than half of those surveyed logged onto social media platforms and texted multiple times per day.

We cannot confirm whether there is a causal effect of digital media use on ADHD from our study," Adam Leventhal, the study's lead author and director of the USC Health, Emotion, & Addiction Laboratory, wrote in an email. "However, this study raises new concerns whether the proliferation of high-performance digital media technologies may be putting a new generation of youth at risk for ADHD."

Previous cross-sectional studies haven't followed children over time to measure the potential influence of digital media use. That's made it difficult to determine whether they were, in fact, more likely to use digital media because they had ADHD.

Read the full article about connections between digital media use and ADHD by Rebecca Ruiz at Mashable