Why Everyone Thinks They Have ADHD

A critical look at short-form content, shrinking attention spans and the rise of overpathologisation

ADHD has become one of the most common explanations for why people cannot think clearly, cannot focus, cannot regulate their emotions and cannot cope with the pace of modern life. Over the last decade, the diagnosis has exploded across children, teenagers and adults, creating the impression that we are living through an unprecedented wave of neurological impairment. Yet when you look closely at the cultural environment people are growing up in today, the rise in ADHD tells us as much about society as it does about individual brains. There is a difference between a disorder and a culture that produces disorder-like behaviours, and I think we have blurred that line far more than most people want to admit.

TikTok and other forms of short video content have reshaped attention in ways we still do not fully understand. These platforms were not designed to be harmless entertainment. They were designed to fragment attention, reward emotional intensity and condition the brain to expect constant novelty. The average TikTok video is only a few seconds long, yet this is enough to gradually weaken the pathways responsible for sustained focus. People scroll for hours without noticing how their attention span shifts. The brain begins craving quick hits of stimulation and becomes uncomfortable with the slower pace of ordinary life. Adults describe themselves as unable to read a paragraph without drifting. Teenagers struggle to start tasks that do not offer an instant dopamine rush. Children cannot sit through a lesson without reaching for stimulation. These behaviours look identical to clinical ADHD, but they can also be manufactured by an environment that relentlessly hijacks attention.

This process begins young. iPad kids are raised on bright colours, instant feedback and endless activity. When a toddler uses a tablet for hours, their brain is not just being entertained. It is being trained. The child learns that silence is uncomfortable and stillness is intolerable. Their developing nervous system adjusts to rapid shifts in stimulation, not the slow rhythms of human life. Then, the child grows older, and every adult around them becomes confused when they cannot regulate themselves, cannot tolerate boredom, or cannot transition between tasks without distress. Instead of questioning the environment that shaped their brain, we label the child as disordered. The device disappears from the conversation. The diagnosis stays.

This is where overpathologisation enters the picture. Everyday struggles are now interpreted through a clinical lens. Forgetting something becomes a symptom. Feeling overwhelmed becomes a mental health condition. Being distracted in a world that constantly interrupts us becomes evidence of a neurodevelopmental disorder. There is a growing cultural belief that all negative feelings must have diagnostic explanations and that if something feels difficult, there must be a label to explain it. The more we therapise normal human discomfort, the more fragile people become. We no longer give ourselves permission to be tired, stressed, distracted or overstimulated. Everything is medical. Everything is pathology. Everything becomes a symptom of something.

TikTok contributes to this therapisation by turning psychology into aesthetic identity. ADHD becomes a personality, not a condition. Creators describe symptoms in ways that fit almost everyone, and the platform rewards videos that make viewers say “me too”. Someone forgets their drink in the car and suddenly wonders if they have ADHD. Someone loses interest in a hobby and sees a video explaining hyperfixation cycles. Someone feels restless after staring at screens for eight hours and decides they relate to the ADHD experience. What is happening is not increased clinical insight. It is algorithmic mirroring. People see themselves reflected in content that was designed to be universally relatable, and because we now live in a culture where self-diagnosis is seen as empowerment, the ADHD label spreads.

Another uncomfortable truth is that ADHD still does not have a clear biological marker. No scan or blood test confirms the condition. Diagnosis is based on behaviour patterns, which makes it extremely vulnerable to cultural influence. Behaviours do not emerge in a vacuum. They emerge in an environment, and our environment is overstimulated, unnatural, and constantly demanding more attention than a human brain was built to give. If millions of people now struggle to regulate attention, we should be asking what has changed in our world, not only what is happening in our neurons.

The therapisation of culture plays into this. People are encouraged to see themselves as psychologically ill, emotionally damaged or neurodivergent by default. Instead of teaching resilience, discipline, boundaries or attentional control, the dominant message is that suffering must be understood through diagnosis. There is a comfort in this. It lifts personal responsibility. It offers community. It gives people a framework to understand their messiness. But it also leaves us unable to cope with normal human variation. When everything is framed as illness, we forget that human beings have always struggled with distraction, boredom, anxiety, insecurity and chaos. We forget that life is difficult even without pathology.

This does not mean ADHD is fake. It exists, and for many people it is profoundly impairing. But the way the diagnosis is now used stretches far beyond the original clinical boundaries. Our attention is collapsing under the weight of technology, overstimulation and endless digital noise, yet we are more comfortable diagnosing brains than questioning the systems that shape them. If anything, the rise of ADHD tells us less about a sudden epidemic of neurological dysfunction and more about the environment we have created. It tells us about parents using devices as pacifiers, about children never learning boredom tolerance, about teenagers raised on algorithms, and about adults drowning in information they cannot process. It tells us that the human brain is being pushed beyond its natural limits and that instead of changing the environment, we keep insisting the brain is broken.

The critical question is whether ADHD is exploding because more people truly have it, or because we are living in a world that produces attention failure on a massive scale. The more I look at the evidence, the more I think the rise of ADHD says less about a disorder and more about a society that has forgotten what normal attention even feels like.

That’s all from this chatterbox today.

With love, always.

Ariana <3