Welcome to the ADD Generation

Media commentators like to label each generation as it emerges on society's center stage. The current spotlight is on the Boomer Generation. Boomers rule...for now. Pity the poor generations that are following the Boomers. They get labels like Gen X, Gen Y, Next Gen. Hurricanes get better names. If you agree that generational names should reflect a dominate characteristic of a group, (think Greatest, Silent and Boomer) then the new players waiting in the wings might well be called the ADD Generation - and not because of biologically induced ADHD. This generation's name is about the other contributing factor, the media - meaning our consumer-driven media either reflects or actually fosters this ADHD Generation.

The biological explanation for ADHD (widely called ADD because we tend to prefer three-letter acronyms) is the inability of the brain's command center to sort through the multitude of inputs, images, and sounds that engulf us. A lot of folks can ignore the extraneous and focus on one thing. ADDers have difficulty 1) focusing on one thing, 2) tend to jump from one input to the next, and 3) often feel impatient and unfulfilled. Which is exactly what happens during the 7 hours and 12 minutes a day we Americans spend with our TVs turned on. Talk about focus. At a critical moment in a favorite TV show, the actors from the next show do a jolly jump-up on screen demanding attention while the viewer is texting one of her favorite-five on her multi-function cell phone, while simultaneously going through her mail. Or, the blabbing head on the news show shares screen time with EyeWitness-Action7-Live-News-Video-Crisis-Update-Storm-Watch in the upper right corner while a news crawl on the bottom warns of mad-goat disease in Tierra del Fuego, while the young viewer is talking on the phone. Focus? Where? OK, some would say it's this generation's ability to multitask. The 'some-say' being the ones doing the multitasking. While the Greatest, Silent or Boomers might say one person's multitasking is another's inability to concentrate on any one thing effectively.

So, what about the other ADD behaviors -- jumping from one thing to the next and impatience? By golly, that's what the TV remote clicker in your hand is for. If you've got cable, or satellite, you are not sitting through 6-8 minutes of an assaulting commercial break where the audio seems to be much louder than the show. You are impatiently clicking and jumping through the other 199 TV channels, while eating dinner and planning your next day's schedule.

If you ask network or programming chiefs if they are fostering this ADD Generation, they would probably fall back on their time-honored response: "No, we are only giving the consumer what they want." You think? That argument didn't wash for auto pioneer Henry Ford when he said, "If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses."

If communications theorist Marshall McLuhan was right and the "medium is the message," then we are what we watch. And what we watch is a significant contributor to the making of this ADD generation. What does that mean for future generations? Two possibilities. One, the Darwinian choice: succeeding generations develop survival-focus skills and learn to adapt to ever increasing fragmentation. Or, they don't and we evolve into a confused, impatient culture marching towards debilitating fragmentation and chaos. Ironically, this up-and-coming ADD Generation is brought to us, in great part, by the good folks of the Boomer Generation, who currently dominate ownership and execution of all media.

Comments

[Kungfublood]

I wanted to commenet on the adt(?0?thingwhatever but I have to oh..?

[mbaty]

If you watch kids shows especially you notice that everything is bright and happy and fast, and the toys flash by and then it's back to the cartoon...
But maybe it's important for kids to learn to multitask, to have loads of varying information coming from all angles, so that in the future they can deal with the fast pace of life. In a sense, the Boomers didn't need ADD because their world was much less connected and their lives more isolated. Now you're getting a text while talking on the phone while downloading a movie on your portable device while riding the subway or driving, switching the radio stations (because we don't listen to commercials on the radio either) and none of it takes complete focus, but all of it is asking for some attention. ADD may just be a necessary tool.

[realitytrumpsbull]

I am HIGHLY suspicious of the whole ADD/ADHD thing.
I am equally suspicious of all these nebulous
disorders everyone seems to be having, I think
they sell an awful lot of Xanax to people who
basically have kind of crappy lives and need
a doctor's slip to get their happy pills.

We are BOMBARDED with information, info in
the foreground, info in the background, info
on the walls, computers, you name it, the
dataflow gets faster every year. Maybe someday
they'll just set your kid up for an appointment
for the LAN card implant...don't teach kids,
PROGRAM them. Like a computer. Caution:
Garbage in, garbage out...