Do We All Have A.D.H.D. Now?

Plus, the best song about driving ever made...

Author

Adam Zulawski
April 20, 2023 • Estimated Reading Time: 8 minutes

Hi,

Do you find yourself massively distracted by everything? Unable to concentrate?

Apparently, these are symptoms of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD.

If you are experiencing them, it doesn't necessarily mean you have ADHD. But society as a whole does seem to be becoming more concerned that it might have ADHD.

ADHD trending

Five men in suits sit in a row looking at their phones, hats float in the air around them

Leonardo.ai’s interpretation of people with ADHD

Put simply, people are noticing random symptoms, googling what they are, and then worrying they have ADHD. (Thanks for freaking us out, Google).

The Exploding Topics website shows us that use of the search term "Online ADHD Test" has increased massively over the last few years. Searches have also increased for lots of other terms related to ADHD like "ADHD planner" and "ADHD supplement".

The hashtag #ADHD has over 3.4 million posts on Instagram.

If you think that's a lot, the hashtag has been used almost 24 billion times on TikTok.

Re-read that sentence. 24 BILLION. That’s three times the population of Earth.

That TikTok got big quick, didn't it?

The pandemic - that thing that made you sit at home alone all day - we all know it caused more of us to use social media more often. And it's over the last couple years that we see increased evidence of ADHD awareness.

Could the two be related? 🤔

Maybe it's just "Digital ADHD"

Either way, I definitely think our digital lives are a frenzy of distraction and randomness. I personally feel like I am just being shuffled from one app to another a lot of the time.

Here is a typical example of my personal experiences when using my phone:

You can't receive any more emails.

Gmail says your storage is full. You have to delete some files.

So you organise your emails by file size. Half this stuff you don't even recognise. You start deleting.

Then you realise you need to save some of this stuff

You don't even know why you need to save it but you feel like you do.

But you can't save it. Google Drive is full. It's part of Gmail.

So you try save it to your phone. But your phone is running out of space too.

You make too many videos of your dog sleeping. Half a gigabyte of her snoring. But there are so many files, you don't know where they are.

You arrange by file size.

No, you need to keep this one. This one you don't want to forget. Ok, let's just go to the GIFs folder and select all and delete all of that.

That was only 14Mb. Damn it.

Let's go delete some apps

Wait, half of them haven't been updated in ages because you don't have the storage.

Why do you even need storage to update an app? Doesn't matter.

No wonder you couldn't get Uber to work the other night and ended up hailing an actual taxi, ugh.

...Wait, what were you trying to do again?

I don’t particularly enjoy feeling like this. (But there was a certain enjoyable irony posting about it on Twitter, I admit.)

How do we tackle digital ADHD?

The simple answer: use screen devices less. We all know it.

How you do it is more complicated, as it depends on your attitudes and effort, and what we’re really doing on there. But I do think that if you take stock of how you interact with screens, note how they are making you feel, you can assess if it's really worth using everything you’ve installed on them.

For example, think about how you first use your phone or tablet in the morning.

  • Do you check Twitter immediately?

  • How about news sites?

  • Do you jump straight into your email inbox?

  • Do you find yourself suddenly having lost 10 minutes to Facebook videos?

We all have individual experiences, and for some us, these are essential checks. (I’ve definitely checked all sorts of things when I’ve had social media manager duties in the past).

For many of us though, they're not so essential. They are really just entertainment, something to give us a hit of surprise, like a morning coffee. We don't even remember what we saw on there half the time.

I read Digital Minimalism by productivity daddy Cal Newport a few years ago. I definitely curbed a lot of my digital habits thanks to its ideas, even though I did not do the 30-day complete detox it recommends (my job wouldn’t have been doable at the time).

For example, today I do still have the social network apps Twitter and TikTok on my phone, but they have 20-minute limits on them via Android’s Digital Wellbeing. I think they're both highly enjoyable apps, but I need warning messages from my phone to knock me out of the trances they create so that I can get on with my life. TikTok in particular is like crack cocaine to me otherwise.

I don’t think everybody has to go all out and cut themselves off from the Internet. But small attention-kind acts and self-awareness are something we should all adopt.

What do you do to make sure you don't get digital ADHD?

Live performances of the week

A musician I have always wanted to see live is Bobby McFerrin. He is the king of a capella and grandfather of beatboxers everywhere.

I’m particularly fond of his song Drive. Here are two completely different performances of the song, 26 years apart, and both him alone with a microphone.

If you want to know more about McFerrin, this episode of the podcast Switched On Pop is a great primer, especially into his most famous song.

And yes, although I’ve advocated for not getting too distracted by technology in this newsletter, please don’t feel guilty if you go into a McFerrin rabbithole for an hour now. He is totally worth it.

That’s all I’ve got for you this week. Thanks for reading. Go pet a dog.

Adam

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