Are we Living in an ADHD Culture?
How people are losing focus and attention in today’s world and what it means for students and learning.
Have you ever looked at a menu with what seems a million different items? You question the validity of the restaurant, the competency of it’s staff and it’s effectiveness in sustaining the quality of each dish. As the waiter comes closer, the anxiety of making a choice weighs on your mind. You are resentful to the waiter for giving you unwanted pressure and you feel like giving up and walking out.
Watching ‘Kitchen Nightmares’ with Gordon Ramsey a common solution he implements into these bloated restaurants is to simplify the menu and limit the choice so that quality prioritises quantity and that the anxiety of choice is not a burden for the customer.
The reason why I use this analogy is because we face it everyday when we look at our phones. A million choices in what to watch: where to go; what route to take; what to buy; who to respond to; who to date; who to follow; when to wake up; what to invest in; what to learn etc. This list is endless where we become a jack of all trades but a master of none.
Youtubers are aware of this attention deficit amongst us as they always provide incentives to the viewer to watch until the end of the video. They know that the viewer is one click away from spiralling into the goldfish black hole of recommended content so they only have a limited time in order to hold attention. Sometimes with titles and thumbnails that evoke an immediate emotional response. This does not bode well with the crisis of media with fake news and echo chambers.
We are hunting for our dopamine fix. The reward at the end of the road. However, we wake up with our phones at a crossroads with an endless amount of paths to follow, never really committing and taking the first initial steps.
The reason why I ask this question and use the Pseudonym ‘The ADHD Teach’ in writing is that firstly, two members of my family and I were diagnosed with ADD and ADHD in adulthood. Secondly, I believe it holds the key in re- evaluating education as only 15% of students with ADHD complete a bachelor’s degree or higher. This indicates that schools are not providing them a platform for learning yet it needs to as our society mirrors these learners and their difficulties, as society and generation Z continue to suffer more with attention deficiency sinking in a whirlwind of distraction.
Due to the obsession of dreams, the internet and society hangs our dopamine fixes or dreams of what we want to become like stars in the sky which our minds so badly crave.
I spoke to a friend’s Korean boyfriend: Jonny, as she said that he did not have dreams. I asked him about this and he said it is not that he does not have dreams, but it is his obligation to turn those dreams into objectives otherwise they are just sparkling distractions in the sky. Whether it was Korean culture or Jonny’s personal opinion I thought that it made complete logical sense and made my culture’s statement of “Follow your dreams” sound delusional. Maybe, there should be an addition to this pop cultural statement – “Follow your dreams and carry on sleeping”.
As pointed out in my previous article I do believe that learning is the key to happiness however an essential ingredient for learning is attention. Schools students and education are fighting against the virtual world of distractions where the content is sometimes designed to make the recipient passive and not active, hence limiting creativity.
The internet could be considered the greatest library man has ever made. However, it’s halls are ridden with posters vying for our attention. In a world where we can learn about everything, we end up learning nothing at all.
There is still a key role for schools to play though. We want to reach our learning goals and we go to experts, tutors and instructors for guidance and discipline. It is also easier when aims and objectives are shared and collaborative learning brings a healthy competition to persist and carry on.
Take for example the act of getting fit. There are countless online fitness instructors with an abundance of free online content where we could in theory do it on our own. However (talking from personal experience), it is easier to have a dedicated instructor and it is even more pleasing when we have a gym buddy who we can share our experiences and struggles with.
This is where school needs to change and not prescribe to students what they should learn to make them conform to a criteria of success based on a 20th century model. Instead facilitate their learning, focus on giving them options, build their autonomy so that they can choose what to learn, and guide them with learning plans so that they can reach their objectives and dreams for them not to be just distractions in the sky.
Today we are too distracted with the things we could buy, the people who we could become and the places where we could go. We have fallen out of love with the process and we look for immediate gratification and reward.
Education needs to help students with their attention deficiency so that they are not weighted with anxiety. Help them be more mindful and aware of the present and focus on the enjoyment of the process of learning and empower them in their digital world so that they can better circumnavigate the storms of distractions that they live in.
