Effects of binge gaming on youth with ADHD

[Dr. Clifford Sussman] While I did say that binge gaming doesn’t cause ADHD, it certainly has effects on kids with ADHD when they do it and effects that may, you know, cause more problems for them than other kids. There’s a residual effect from being – from having this dopamine system go as much as it wants to for so long. When you get this constant flow of dopamine over time, you become desensitized to dopamine. Just lke you would f you were to have a lot of alcohol, you would become eventually tolerant to alcohol, and it would take more alcohol to give you the same effect. It’s the same thing with dopamine. Kids get desensitized to it and it has a residual effect to that even after they’re done, you know – they finally get off their screen, you know, after maybe many hours of gaming, they’re desensitized to dopamine, rather, so that they’re even more sensitive to boredom in the real world. And they need even more dopamine from the real world.