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ADHD Rising With Smartphones
No one remembers the inventors of the pocket calculator. The first person to mass-produce LED screens? Largely forgotten. You might remember using that technology daily, but the engineer or company that brought it to market doesn’t have to be all that extraordinary–they just need to be pretty good at the job.
The same story applies to modern tech, including the device you might be holding in your hand right now―your smartphone.
Smartphones are not designed by visionaries who understand every angle of human behavior. More often, these tools are created by companies chasing an ever-moving target of convenience, connectivity, and profit. But we humans are the ones living through the era of their consequence.
And nowhere is this more evident than in the rising rates of ADHD diagnoses, especially in young people.
The ADHD Epidemic: Rising Trends
Over the last two decades, diagnoses of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) have markedly increased. According to data from the Center for Disease Control (CDC), ADHD diagnoses in children aged 4–17 jumped from 4% in 2000 to over 10% by 2020. Adults aren’t exempt either―recognition of ADHD in grown-ups has surged in recent years, as conversations about neurodiversity go mainstream.
At the same time that ADHD cases rise, the technology landscape has dramatically shifted, with one device anchoring this transformation: the smartphone.
Coincidence or Correlation?
It’s a tempting parallel. Around the same time that ADHD diagnoses began an upward climb, smartphones arrived and quickly became ubiquitous. By 2012, the smartphone penetration rate among Americans had reached 50%. Today, most people can’t imagine life without one.
But is there a direct link between smartphones and ADHD, or do their rising prominence merely overlap? To answer that, you have to look at two key factors: attention and overstimulation.
How Smartphones Hijack Attention
Psychologists have long likened attention to a finite resource. Tasks like problem-solving, reading, or even casual conversation require mental energy and focus. Smartphones, with their constant barrage of notifications, vibrations, and alerts, demand this attention almost constantly. They are engineered to keep your eyes and brain glued to them.
Consider this: data from app usage platforms show that the average person checks their phone 96 times a day. That’s at least four times every hour.
Over time, this fragmented attention can train the brain to jump quickly from one task to another, rewarding short bursts of engagement over sustained focus. Interestingly, this is one of the hallmark behaviors of ADHD—challenges with maintaining focus, impulsivity, and difficulty completing tasks.
Overstimulation in a Digital World
Digital overstimulation doesn’t just affect attention; it impacts how the brain develops. Studies suggest that rapid shifts between tasks (like swiping social media, jumping from a text to a quick email, and then back to a TikTok video) could create a state of “continuous partial attention.”
For growing minds in particular, this constant state of overstimulation may disrupt the parts of the brain responsible for sustained thought, impulse control, and decision-making—functions that are also disrupted in individuals with ADHD.
Technology as Amplifier, Not Creator
But it’s crucial to note that smartphones don’t cause ADHD in a vacuum. ADHD is widely regarded as primarily a genetic condition with some environmental influences. What smartphones may be doing is amplifying pre-existing tendencies toward inattention for those already predisposed. They’re not the “birthplace” of ADHD, but perhaps the midwives.
Smartphones, social media platforms, and other tech systems often operate less like precision tools and more like blunt objects. They’re not wielded by masterminds with perfect foresight—they’re driven by iterative development, AI-recommended tweaks, and an endless game of incrementally improving engagement metrics.
If they change how we think, work, and live, it’s not necessarily by design. It’s through a messy and speculative evolution, one nudge at a time.
As Kevin Kelly, the futurist and technologist, remarked: technology evolves symbiotically with humans. In this case, smartphones evolve to demand our attention, and some of us—those more vulnerable to ADHD or already managing the condition—may fall harder under their influence.
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