The Digital Mirror – Is Social Media Redefining ADHD?
How is social media affecting our understanding and identification with ADHD?
Fifty-one years ago, David Rosenhan published his infamous (and now redacted) study, “On Being Sane in Insane Places.” He was interested in investigating the validity of psychiatric diagnosis and the effects of diagnostic labelling on behavioural outcomes. His experiment involved sending individuals with no history of psychopathology to be admitted into psychiatric hospitals to obtain admission with a diagnosis of schizophrenia or bipolar disorder. Rosenhan noted that pseudopatients were not identified as impostors by the hospital staff, who interpreted all their behaviour in terms of mental illness. For instance, a nurse reportedly labelled one of the pseudopatient’s note-taking as pathological "writing behaviour".
While Rosenhan’s study was later found to be fraudulent, it raises important questions about the power of diagnostic labelling and the ease with which behaviour is pathologized. Today, I think that a phenomenon of this nature is unfolding in digital platforms. The overuse of social media and technology has induced symptoms of inattention which closely resemble ADHD due to their dysregulating effects on our dopaminergic system. This is not necessarily due to intrinsic neurodevelopmental differences, but rather the result of environmental overstimulation. Online, these experiences risk being interpreted and self-labelled as neurodivergence.
Empirical research linking ADHD and attentional deficits to problematic social media use is well-supported. Individuals who intensively consume social media become accustomed to switching their attention between social media and other activities, which has been found to impair their ability to filter irrelevant information. This constant attentional switching mirrors the distractibility observed in ADHD. Users may also become accustomed to the quality of entertainment on social media, which often features short, highly stimulating content. As a result, they may perceive activities requiring increased attention as boring or understimulating. Boer et al. (2020) suggest that adolescents may develop compulsive checking behaviours, such as refreshing feeds or responding to notifications, which further fragment attention and reduce executive control.
Individuals diagnosed with ADHD are more vulnerable to problematic social media use as a result of their already impaired executive functioning. This includes poorer working memory, reduced response inhibition (the ability to suppress unwanted impulses), and a strong preference for immediate over delayed rewards. Social media use is even more stimulating for adolescents with ADHD. The rapid, unpredictable rewards of online platforms reinforce dopamine-driven cycles of engagement that are difficult to regulate. Thus, current research suggests that intense social media use may produce ADHD-like symptoms in individuals without ADHD, and also exacerbates symptoms among diagnosed individuals.
Nonetheless, the line between ADHD and non-ADHD attentional deficits remains blurry among individuals who are not well-versed in the academic literature. In online communities, such as ADHDTok (a TikTok subculture discussing lived experiences with ADHD), symptoms are depicted through everyday experiences that apply to the majority of the population frequenting social media. These include procrastination, forgetfulness, and daydreaming. Holroyd (2025) argues that these representations trivialize the ADHD experience and enable users to understand themselves as having the disorder. Individuals involved in these communities use ADHD as a personal identity rather than a medical diagnosis to better connect with others sharing similar experiences.
ADHD-adjacent media, then, becomes salient to a large community of individuals because it resonates with their experiences using social media, which leaves them more susceptible to self-diagnosing with the disorder. What’s more, identity performances of and understandings of ADHD resist medicalized narratives and represent neurodivergence as a personal identifier with emerging group characteristics.
The extent to which these patterns are problematic depends on perspective. Self-diagnosis can be concerning, as it risks pathologizing behaviour that results from excessive social media use. It distances individuals from critically examining exploitative digital platforms, which siphon our attention and disrupt our cognitive faculties. It seems reductionistic to plaster the label of ADHD on these phenomena. However, these communities allow individuals who would have otherwise gone unnoticed to receive a proper diagnosis and treatment for ADHD. Despite their flaws, ADHD communities do a good job at humanizing the disorder, speaking to individuals who might feel alone in their struggles.
Ultimately, the question is not whether one’s inattention arises due to ADHD or excessive social media use, but how it can be meaningfully addressed. During Rosenhan’s study, people could only access care if they had a particular diagnosis, which was commonly stigmatizing and harmful. Today, the goal of psychotherapy is not to confirm or deny those labels, but to help individuals reclaim agency over their inner and outer worlds. Therapy offers a space to slow down, reorient, and reconnect with one’s capacity for focus and meaning.
In an age where the boundaries between pathology and adaptation are increasingly blurred, perhaps the most compassionate response is neither to overpathologize nor to dismiss, but to meet each individual where they are, not as diagnoses, but as human beings navigating a digital landscape that exploits and fragments human cognitive capacities.
References
Boer, M., Stevens, G., Finkenauer, C., & van den Eijnden, R. (2020). Attention Deficit
Hyperactivity Disorder-Symptoms, Social Media Use Intensity, and Social Media Use
Problems in Adolescents: Investigating Directionality. Child development, 91(4),
e853–e865. https://doi.org/10.1111/cdev.13334
Dekkers, T. J., & van Hoorn, J. (2022). Understanding Problematic Social Media Use in
Adolescents with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD): A Narrative Review
and Clinical Recommendations. Brain sciences, 12(12), 1625.
https://doi.org/10.3390/brainsci12121625
Holroyd, D. (2025). ‘Why is everyone self-diagnosing with ADHD nowadays?’: the affective
economy of ADHD TikTok. Continuum, 1–14. https://doi.org/10.1080/10304312.2025.2544777
Rosenhan, D. L. (1973). On being sane in insane places. Science, 179(4070), 250–258.