Driven to Distraction

Attention deficit disorder (ADD) is reaching epidemic proportions these days. It’s common to see kids diagnosed with it at early ages. Medications are routinely prescribed to treat it. Every semester students approach me and tell me that if they have trouble in my class it’s because they have ADD. It isn’t just the younger students who tell me this either. Older students tell me about their struggles with ADD, too. So, what’s going on here? Why is ADD showing up so much now?

There are two factors we need to look at when considering why ADD is so common now. The first factor is how the problem is diagnosed. Currently, there are no blood tests to diagnose the problem. Brain scans do show notable differences in the frontal cortex but they are not used very often to diagnose ADD because they cost too much. Instead, clinicians rely on the observations of parents and teachers. This has created a situation where the disorder might be diagnosed too often. So what can parents do?

Parents need to have an open dialogue with their child’s physician and/or therapist. Seek a second opinion if you aren't sure your kid has ADD. Medication might not always be the best option either. Try to keep your kid on a routine sleep schedule and a decent diet. It's also a good idea to keep them active instead of letting them play video games and watch television all the time. That said, try not to over-schedule their daily activities. Kids need down time where they can relax and just be kids. Too many obligations early on may overwhelm a child who is prone to ADD, which brings up the second factor I wanted to mention – culture.

Modern culture is getting faster and faster. We can chat, text, tweet, and get instant gratification. We are told that we need to multi-task. We need to be doing things constantly. We put a high value on these things. The fast pace of modern society and the pressure to constantly multi-task has created a situation ripe for the spread of a cultural type of ADD. I'm not alone in these convictions either. Other social scientists and educators have warned that modern culture promotes ADD.

So, what can we do as a society? Well, first there are no mental free lunches. Every time we multi-task we split our attentional resources between two or more things. Sometimes this is not a problem. At other times, one of the tasks will suffer dramatically. We should allow ourselves to do one thing at a time more often. Along these lines, we should encourage activities like reading or playing a musical instrument that keep our attention and mental resources focused for an extended amount of time. If we slow down, do less multi-tasking, and learn how and when to focus our mental resources, we might find that fewer people are being diagnosed as having ADD.