Schooling getting more boring due to growing alternatives
Driving the "epidemic" of A.D.H.D. has gone unnoticed: the increasingly stark contrast between the regimented and demanding school environment and the highly stimulating digital world, where young people spend their time outside school. Digital life, with its vivid gaming and exciting social media, is a world of immediate gratification where practically any desire or fantasy can be realized in the blink of an eye.
By comparison, school would seem even duller to a novelty-seeking kid living in the early 21st century than in previous decades, and the comparatively boring school environment might accentuate students' inattentive behavior, making their teachers more likely to see it and driving up the number of diagnoses.
One of my patients, a young woman in her early 20s, is prototypical. "I've been on Adderall for years to help me focus," she told me at our first meeting. Before taking Adderall, she found sitting in lectures unendurable and would lose her concentration within minutes. Like many people with A.D.H.D., she hankered for exciting and varied experiences and also resorted to alcohol to relieve boredom. But when something was new and stimulating, she had laserlike focus. I knew that she loved painting and asked her how long she could maintain her interest in her art. "No problem. I can paint for hours at a stretch."
Rewards like sex, money, drugs and novel situations all cause the release of dopamine in the reward circuit of the brain, a region buried deep beneath the cortex. Aside from generating a sense of pleasure, this dopamine signal tells your brain something like, "Pay attention, this is an important experience that is worth remembering."
The more novel and unpredictable the experience, the greater the activity in your reward center. But what is stimulating to one person may be dull -- or even unbearably exciting -- to another. There is great variability in the sensitivity of this reward circuit.