ADHD diagnoses are rising. These days, it feels as though everyone knows someone who has ADHD or suspects that they have it themselves. Today, one in ten children are reported to have an ADHD diagnosis in the United States. In the 1990s, only six percent of children had a diagnosis, but the number has continued to climb, reaching ten percent in 2016. 

As young adults, we often hear friends joke about being “so ADHD” when describing bouts of forgetfulness or disorganization. The disorder has become synonymous with quaint personality quirks like habitually running late or forgetting to respond to texts. Social media posters have pumped out non-clinical checklists describing similar traits in order to help people online self-diagnose. Procrastination, forgetfulness, restlessness – although these could describe someone with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, they are also vague traits that could apply to anyone who struggles with conscientiousness or attention. 

So what is really happening here? Is ADHD awareness and diagnosis rapidly improving? Or has ADHD become an Instagram-fueled social contagion? 

Oversimplification and Social Media 

ADHD is so much more complex than disorganization or forgetfulness. Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder describes a profile of a particular kind of brain management system. 

Most people with ADHD struggle with not just memory, but working memory. Working memory describes the ability to take new information, process it, and edit it. For example, short term memory allows someone to remember a series of numbers like a telephone number or a passcode. Working memory describes the ability to not only mentally capture those numbers, but the ability to reorganize them or modify them in your head. 

The problem is, the nuances of the experience of a person with ADHD – like the difference between short term memory and working memory – might be difficult for any person to describe, let alone capture in a social media post. This had led to an enormous surplus of oversimplified information on ADHD being posted to platforms like Instagram, Tik Tok, or Youtube. These posts might appear as literal or verbal check lists describing vague traits or habits that most people have probably engaged in at some point in their life. Checking “yes” to descriptors like “talk a lot” or “interrupts others” is simply not enough for a formal, clinical diagnosis. 

The truth is, we all struggle with remembering things sometimes. It’s best left to a professional to determine if the frequency of forgetfulness or the kind of forgetfulness we experience is worth any real medical concern. 

Are Our Attention Spans Getting Shorter?

Back in 2004, the University of California Irvine tested the average attention spans of adults by requiring study participants to work in a Word document. They were timed by how long they would spend working in the document before clicking away into their email or another site. The average attention spans of adults in 2004 were recorded to be about two and a half minutes on average. The university has continued to run the study today, showing a drastic decrease in attention span. Today, the adults who participated in this study averaged an attention span of 47 seconds. 

This begs the question: are our attention spans getting shorter? The data seems to say yes. Academics suggest that the decrease in our attention spans can be attributed to the sheer amount of distractions that are available to us at any given moment from the phones in our pocket to the infinite possibilities that await us with a newly opened tab in our internet browser. Our world has continued to adapt to our decreasing attention with the introduction of short form content on platforms like Instagram or Tik Tok to shorter scene times in film. Even editorial or news articles are moving to easy-to-read bullet point or list formats. 

In short, the sharp decrease of our attention spans over the last twenty years or so have likely contributed to the influx of people who are concerned about attention deficit issues. Naturally, the more people who seek out an ADHD diagnosis, the more diagnoses there will be. 

Do We All Have ADHD Now? 

Ultimately, the rise in ADHD diagnoses is likely a reflection of many corresponding issues. Social media has made ADHD more visible, which has resulted in a rise of self-diagnoses, but also in individuals seeking real clinical help as well. And in the digital age, we live in an increasingly distracting world. Our attention is constantly in tug-of-war between our work and every new notification from our phones or our emails. It’s easy to see why so many people these days are questioning their ability to focus.

Rather than viewing the rise of diagnoses as evidence of social contagion amongst young people, it may be more useful to see it as a sign of advances in the diagnoses of neurodivergent brain systems. Greater awareness and improved diagnostic practices mean that those who have been unknowingly struggling with ADHD can finally receive the support they need. While we should still remain cautious of self-diagnosis and the oversimplification of neurodivergent disorders, the advances that have brought ADHD into the mainstream conversation are a positive step forward.

Do you think self diagnosis has become a problem? Let us know your thoughts below!