North Jersey – Sarah Nolan 
Tom Kersting, a therapist and school counselor with 21 years of experience, said his job began to change dramatically around 2008 when the number of 14- and 15-year-olds freshly diagnosed with attention deficit disorder began to skyrocket. New challenges presented themselves again around 2015, he said, when the majority of his referrals were kids suffering from anxiety. He received more calls last year regarding anxious children than in the previous 17 years of his career combined. A main culprit of both phenomena? A major uptick in young people’s use of digital devices that Kersting said is actually changing the brains of children physically and chemically, affecting their abilities to cope and concentrate.(more)