Microblog Memes

Thank you for offering this perspective!

I've realized there are a lot of things that seem to exacerbate ADHD, or even trigger someone to lose focus. I remember when Twitter was new, and I slowly came to realize that people were inadvertently being trained to pay attention in smaller and smaller snippets. Then a decade later, we get TikTok, which is basically Twitter for videos.

A scroll of hundreds of small bits of novelty are being consumed and immediately discarded by millions of people a day. Writing more than a paragraph in some places leads to someone remarking, TL;DR. I understand having trouble focusing - almost every time I write a comment on here, it takes forever, at the least because whatever song is stuck repeating in my head is playing "louder" than the words I'm consciously trying to think of. I suppose I'm lucky to have grown up before the internet became an information-selling dopamine train.

The good news for those of us on Lemmy is, at least we're in a "slower" environment here (at least, right now.) It's a good step for someone trying to wean themselves off more rapid-fire social media. (Also, there are several ADHD communities here where people get it.)

One more thing that I realized through introspection - having a parent that instilled anxiety in you can absolutely increase ADHD behaviors. I'm pretty sure I wouldn't be as hyper vigilant if it weren't for my mom filling me with her own anxieties as a child. That hyper-vigilance means that no matter what I'm doing, I still have a strong awareness of my surroundings, and every little sound or light (or other stimulus) that stands out will distract me even further. I have friends that can truly zone out despite such things, and I remember being able to do that when I was little, but now I can barely relax enough to fall asleep. Ah well.