OK Boomer
Debunking common myths on ADHD
“He’s just lazy”
He’s not lazy. He has difficulty changing tasks, especially away from something totally engrossing, like Fortnite, TikTok, or the World Cup. Excuse me but if the teachers really wanted me to get my homework done, wouldn’t they make it more interesting?
He also has trouble managing time, what some call “time-blindness.”1 While everyone certainly does this from time to time, people with ADHD have a worse sense of time management. When we get “in flow” four hours can pass in the blink of an eye.
“But everyone does that”
That’s part of what’s so tricky about ADHD. Many of its symptoms occur in all people to some extent. Diagnostic criteria for ADHD insist that these disruptions happen with greater severity and frequency, and they happen across domains—in personal life, school, work, social events, and so on.
“She’ll outgrow it”
She might. Some studies suggest that by adulthood, up to 1/3 of children with ADHD have changed so that they are exhibiting symptoms within the “normal” range of behavior. These individuals, though, still tend to show symptoms on the high side of that range. Also, that was kind of insensitive to say, Boomer. We’re going through something here.
“They say everyone’s got ADHD these days”
Easy, grandpa. Yes, we diagnose more people with ADHD these days than we did in the stone age. Overwhelmingly, research shows that’s because we know more about the syndrome, what to look for, and our diagnostic tools have gotten a lot better. Our best estimates are that ~30% of people with ADHD still go through life undiagnosed.
“You get it from your phone”
Grandma, if you got it through your phone, why would so many people across the globe who use their phone every day not have ADHD? Yes, phones are distracting as hell. But as we said before, ADHD has to be diagnosed across several domains, not just from staring at your phone for too long at the dinner table.
We know that at least 2/3 cases of ADHD have a genetic link to them. Research suggests that the remaining cases may have been caused by a small injury or other developmental issue in early childhood, but this data is tenuous at best.
“ADHD is just another invention of Americans”
Rates of ADHD diagnosis are actually pretty consistent across the developed world. New Zealand children are diagnosed at about 7%, as are Chinese and Japanese. The United States, according to the CDC is at almost 10%.2 Russel Barkley has argued that A) this is likely because Americans have been leading research in this area and B) that compared to under-diagnosing, over-diagnosing ADHD is hardly a problem at all.3
https://health.clevelandclinic.org/time-blindness/
https://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/adhd/data.html
Barkley, R. A. (2020). Taking charge of ADHD: The complete, authoritative guide for parents. The Guilford Press.