Today’s digital attention anxieties were anticipated by late-twentieth-century ADHD medicalization debates

Evidence

Current concerns about pathologies of human attention in the digital age were arguably anticipated by discussions of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in the late twentieth century and concomitant worries about the medicalization and politicization of children’s attention spans and well-being (Bergey et al. — Annual Review of Anthropology contributors (⚠ verify author line), The Political Economy of Attention, 23

Categorization

• XREF: Echoes the reader’s existing work on moral panics (the immodesty article pattern): attention-panic discourse, like dress-panic, medicalizes and politicizes a moral anxiety. — connects to: Standard ADHD diagnosis individualizes what is actually a systemic condition — Yves Citton, The Ecology of Attention, 65; Attention deficit disorders partly reflect unhealthy attention environments — Yves Citton, The Ecology of Attention, 258; Depression, ADHD, and burnout stem from excess positivity rather than external threat — Byung-Chul Han, The Burnout Society, 25

Related

• Standard ADHD diagnosis individualizes what is actually a systemic condition (similarity 0.82)
• Depression, ADHD, and burnout stem from excess positivity rather than external threat (similarity 0.81)
• Attention has long been treated as valuable and manipulable, not only digitally. (similarity 0.79)
• Attention deficit disorders partly reflect unhealthy attention environments (similarity 0.79)
• Attention has emerged as a site of political, economic, and moral struggle (similarity 0.78)

Broader Connections

• Attention deficit disorders partly reflect unhealthy attention environments #corroborates (0.78) — Yves Citton, The Ecology of Attention, 258
• Depression, ADHD, and burnout stem from excess positivity rather than external threat #complicates (0.72) — Byung-Chul Han, The Burnout Society, 25