Attention Defecit: The Brain Syndrome of Our Era

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their free time you see a vast majority of them spending their free time indoors on the computer, watching T.V., or playing video games. New social media websites like Facebook and Twitter keep kids glued to their computers and phones all day waiting to see who posts what and who did that. Social norms have now changed from interacting with others face to face to interacting with others electronically. Thus, teens and young adults are now focused on social media websites rather than school. Numerous teens are facing the biggest problem that any teen can face when it comes to school and work; procrastination. As a result, many teens attention spans suffer and many are forming what is known as ADHD or Attention Defecit Hyperactivity Disorder. Teens are lacking the ability to pay attention and are often lacking the ability to stay focused on important aspects of their life. “Our brains try to adapt rapidly by shifting attention from one activity to another-a strategy that is now almost a requirement for survival. As a consequence, attention deficit disorder is becoming epidemic in both children and adults” (Restak 335). People have to much to focus on so they try and focus on everything, resulting in ADHD, and hindering the ability of many teens and adults to focus on things like school.

Considering how rapidly technology is changing the way we communicate, our brains will forever be adapting to these changes, for good or bad. These changes in technology have taught our minds to multitask without even knowing it. For example, texting and driving or watching T.V. while reading the crawler at the bottom of the screen. Our brains adapting to these new ways of multitasking can better prepare people for the real world. You have to work to make a living and no matter where you work you will face multiple tasks at a time. When faced with these tasks your brain will already be comfortable juggling them due to the adaptation to technology in our modern era. Despite this, there are consequences to learning how to multitask and the advancement of technology. Changes in technology have resulted in changes in how we communicate as a whole. Social websites like Facebook and Twitter have come about, resulting in never ending distractions. These distractions have caused our brains to try and focus on too many things at once, which results in things like ADHD. People are now facing the problem of being focused on too many things at once and lack the ability to focus on what is truly important. Maybe if society were to shy away from social technological advancments then people in general would be a lot more productive then they are now.