I believe it was on psych central.. I can't look while at the office - that site is a no/no..

But here is a copy from my email (I sent it to my MIL)

New research reveals causes for ADHD type behaviors.
Published on August 5, 2013 by Mack R. Hicks, Ph.D. in Digital Pandemic

In the last six years the rate of diagnosis of ADHD has jumped 15% according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. What are some of the possible factors behind this increase in ADHD symptoms?
Over diagnosis is certainly a possibility, although the criteria for diagnosing the behavior associated with ADHD have not changed.
The second possibility is pressure from parents and teachers to have the child take the “magic pill,” and hopefully do better in school. Remember, Ivy League college scholarships are worth over $200,000 for four years.
Another factor is that children with ADHD do better when they play outside on grass. They do better than indoors, but also better than outdoors on concrete. Times have indeed changed. Children are spending half as much time outdoors as they were before 1992 and 8-18 year old kids spend 7 hours and 38 minutes using entertainment media in a typical day, not Including computer time for schoolwork. Only 6% of kids even play outside on their own. Most of them are in daycare or school and come home only for a snack and bedtime. School and city playgrounds are deemed unsafe, mainly because of the fear of lawsuits.
No one is sure why this is true, but the data appear reliable. So maybe outdoors is a good place for our kids, especially if they are overly active. Any solutions? How about playing video games outdoors? Sounds kinds of dangerous, doesn't it? Whatever prompted such a scary thought? I can see kids walking into trees or getting lost while playing Donkey Kong.
New research from the Journal of Biological Psychiatry supports this need for exposure to the outdoors. It suggests that living in States with greater sunshine (solar intensity or SI) may protect against the development of ADHD. There is a wide variation of reported attention deficit disorder from a low of 5.6% in Nevada to a high of 15.6% in North Carolina. Some of this can result from differences in diagnostic practices, but something else may be going on as well.
Why would this be the case? The authors believe that use of modern media, including IPads and mobile phones shortly before bedtime, results in delayed sleep onset, shorter sleep duration, and melatonin suppression. Natural light may counteract the effects of modern media in the evening.
But yet another factor may be lack of structure in children's lives, along with poor sleeping habits. Pediatricians are worried because some parents are using melatonin to help their kids get to sleep at night. (A magic sleeping pill for children? Jennifer Breheny Wallace, The Wall Street Journal, Sunday, June 30, 2013). That's all we need! Kids given meds at night by their parents and then turned over to electronic games during the day. Talk about going around in unhealthy circles!
In most cases, good sleep habits come from good family habits. Children love structure and that means regular bedtimes and regular meal times. Regular study times also need to be included because otherwise the child may be anxious or stressed about success in school. I am amazed at the number of children I see out late at night at baseball games, restaurants and community recreation events. They are over-tired and over-stimulated because it's way past a reasonable bedtime. And, of course, they are excited to be included in adult activities.
Most parents realize that their children need structure but are so unstructured themselves that they can't follow through. Parents mean well and love their children, but they are often encouraged to be "flexible" and not inhibit their child's freedom.
While true ADHD is probably genetic, all of the above factors could results in increases in behavior that mimic ADHD. Another obvious explanation for a rise in ADHD type behaviors is the increase in digital devices and their use by children. It's no wonder children dive into electronic games. The games provide some degree of structure, meaning, and control. Kids are able to impose the kind of control their parents should be imposing and the kids relish it.
Observations at our Center Academy Schools for ADHD lead us to believe that kids focus on video games in a different way than they focus in the classroom. In my book, The Digital Pandemic, Reestablishing Face-to-Face Contact in the Electronic Age, I discuss the dilemma of the Pug in the Park:
I observed a crowd of people laughing as a cute little Pug chased bits of reflected light on the sidewalk that came from the metal dog tags around his neck. Our little dog was what we psychologists call stimulus bound. The stimulus, or flashing lights in this case, bind him tightly as rope or chains and he can’t escape its hold over him.
This frustrated little guy was both over-focused on the reflected light and under -focused on the world around him. Replace the cute little dog with a child and the picture isn't pretty. This explains the popularity of the term electronic cocaine in describing children's stimulus bound and addictive responses to electronic games. (South Korea reports 1 in 5 students are addicted to Smartphone use –over 7 hours per day, with insomnia and depression when cut off from use!)
So this increase in ADHD symptoms could result from a combination of things including over diagnosis, poor sleep habits, lack of structure, too much indoor living, the pressure to push the “magic pill” for academic excellence, and the addictive use of electronic games.
What to do? Provide as much structure as possible, including regular meal times, bedtimes, chores, and study times. Limit electronic game use during the week and at night prior to bedtime, but allow their use in short increments as a reward for completed chores and cooperative behavior.
Good luck. Isn’t the family a great and challenging institution? Dare I say ––Enjoy!

Found the link

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/digital-pandemic/201308/why-the-incr...

Another good article

by Mack R. Hicks, PhD
Is the Digital Culture Killing Us?
Texting, Internet, and computer games. Making us more vulnerable to depression?
Published on June 25, 2013 by Mack R. Hicks, Ph.D. in Digital Pandemic

Ross Douthat wrote in The New York Times, Sunday, May 19, 2013, about lonely people and the fact that the suicide rate for Americans 35 to 54 increased nearly 30 percent between 1999 and 2010. He quotes a Virginia sociologist, Brad Wilcox, who connects suicide and weakened social ties.

Of course, other factors may also be working against these people. Unemployment in a marginal economy has taken a toll. This is especially true for those who depend on materialism as a philosophy of life. White males have also lost employment positions as women enter the workforce and minorities have increased their access to jobs.

Douthat quotes Judith Schulevitz who says that one in three Americans over 45 is chronically lonely, up from just one in five a decade ago. The Internet promises a virtual community to replace the real community, but I doubt that it can replace warm-blooded friends as a source of support in a time of need.

In fact, addiction to games and the Internet may be contributing to this trend.
Megan McBride Kelly, in The Wall Street Journal, Sunday, May 18, 2013, reports that the average Facebook user has 142 friends. She reviews Aristotle's definitions of friendship and the first one is the need for love. She questions whether tracking people on Facebook leads to love. She guesses that at least 90 percent of Facebook friendships are those of utility and self-promotion, where we always put our best face forward.

Computer games, the Internet and social networks can keep some people on a narcissistic high, it seems to me. These contacts are based on pleasure, but it is pleasure for us and not for the other person.

It's also easy to neglect authentic friendships when we are so caught up in technological self-pleasure. Aristotle talks of the ultimate form of friendship, which is virtuous, meaning concern for our friends’ sake –– and not just for our own. Ms. Kelly reports that her father and grandfather told her that the number of such true friends can be counted on one hand over the course of a lifetime.

When the going gets tough, and jobs are scarce, do these depressed folks have real friends and authentic communities to fall back on? Simple logic tells us that time-consuming addiction to computer use and/or computer games limits time for human interactions.
Before we get carried away with blaming technology and the Internet, there are a number of factors to look at. In the first place, the Great Depression of the 1930s resulted in unemployment and significantly increased suicide rates. One can hardly accuse those people of being addicted to the radio or television (because TV did not exist and radio wasn’t interactive and thus less addictive than electronic games).
We do know from research that suicide rates are lower among religious people. (Sean Trende, Real Clear Politics, May 28, 2013). (One might infer that religious people have more social contact through extended families and church socialization).
But there is no direct research that I am aware of that shows a correlation between people who are absorbed in electronic games and Internet friendships –– and those exhibiting loneliness or suicide. If there is a correlation, we would first need to rule out the usual problems with correlations. Trende gives a good example: There is a high correlation between a rooster crowing and sunrise, but the rooster doesn’t cause the sun to come up.
It’s possible that shy, inhibited, lonely, and even depressed individuals seek out electronic games and get habituated to artificial relationships on Facebook, Twitter and other social media. Additional variables would include IQ, learning disabilities and other factors that would make one more vulnerable to economic pressures, resulting in unemployment.
If we take the population of people who exhibit the characteristics described above and find that more of them are suicidal, we would then need to see how many of these people are addicted to technology and Internet friendships. Perhaps we would find that those engaging in more technology have a lower level of loneliness and suicide because they are connecting –– however superficially –– to many other people, and perhaps they know very well the difference between true friendship and acquiescing to peer-pressure on Facebook.
But if we find that these people are on an artificial, narcissistic high because of use of electronic games and Internet relationships and are indeed lonelier than folks with identical biological, genetic and personality makeups, then it would be important to intervene in this downward-spiraling process. If digital interactions are helping people fend off loneliness and despair, we would need to encourage their use.
Either way, it’s something we need to be aware of and something we need to look at –– sooner rather than later.