Areas › Focus, starting, and ADHD › Screens and attention
Plenty of people now describe attention that fails, memory that slips and a day sliced into fragments. That description on its own is not ADHD, and it is worth being careful before anyone hands over a label.
The environment is producing a version of these symptoms in people who do not have the condition, and calling that a diagnosis does two things badly. It names a person as disordered when the trouble is what their days are made of, and it aims the effort at the wrong place. ADHD is a real and lifelong impairment and deserves a proper assessment. So does a life that has been arranged in a way nobody could concentrate inside.
Qur’an and Sunnah
Striving for more distracts you (Quran 102:1). The distraction is laid at the door of the pursuit itself, which is a fair description of what an ordinary working day now asks of attention.
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
A review of the idea of digital dementia describes associations between heavy device reliance and complaints about memory and attention, including a suggested interaction with ADHD, while noting the evidence is largely observational. A path analysis in medical students placed smartphone addiction on the route from impulsivity through procrastination and short sleep to subjective cognitive decline. Both rest on self-report and correlation, so they support caution about leaping to a diagnosis rather than establishing any cause.
Ali Z, Janarthanan J, Mohan P. (2024). Understanding Digital Dementia and Cognitive Impact in the Current Era of the Internet: A Review.. Cureus doi
Hamvai C, Kiss H, Vörös H, Fitzpatrick KM, Vargha A, Pikó BF. (2023). Association between impulsivity and cognitive capacity decrease is mediated by smartphone addiction, academic procrastination, bedtime procrastination, sleep insufficiency and daytime fatigue among medical students: a path analysis.. BMC medical education doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
Two very different causes can produce the same complaint, and only one of them is something you carry with you.
When not to
None of this is a reason to wave away a real assessment: difficulties that go back to childhood and show up everywhere are exactly what should be looked at properly.
This one is still a draft. It is waiting on a scholar and a clinician to read it before it is published.
Near this one
Ask a child how long they were on the tablet and the answer comes back low. Ask their parent and that answer comes back low too. Neither of them is exactly lying to you.
Charge the phone in another room overnight and use a proper alarm clock. Small change, and it takes the decision away from you completely.
A ping about a parcel and a ping about your mother's health feel identical in the second before you look. Give that feeling a name, false urgency, and you get a little room.