"Many adults with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder ( ADHD) describe a frustrating pattern. They intend to check their smartphone for a moment and, suddenly, hours are gone. They scroll Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram, and toggle between their messages and their favorite games. This is not a failure of discipline. It reflects how the ADHD brain interacts with modern technology. In my practice as a psychiatrist specializing in adult ADHD, I often see how this pattern quietly consumes evenings and undermines sleep, relationships, and personal goals."
"Researchers believe that ADHD involves differences in dopamine signaling, reward anticipation, and impulse control. Smartphones deliver novelty, rapid feedback, and unpredictable rewards. This is exactly the combination that captures and holds the ADHD brain. The phone offers the promise of stimulation or relief from mental fatigue. Over time, the phone becomes the default way to deal with stress and boredom, and this often leads to more mental fatigue."
Many adults with ADHD experience compulsive smartphone use that consumes large portions of the day. Brief checks often expand into hours of scrolling across social media, messages, and games. ADHD-related differences in dopamine signaling, reward anticipation, and impulse control make the phone's novelty, rapid feedback, and unpredictable rewards particularly capturing. The phone becomes a habitual tool for relieving boredom or mental fatigue, which paradoxically increases fatigue and undermines sleep, relationships, and goals. Behavioral change can reduce daily phone use dramatically. Lower phone use can improve sleep, enable exercise and evening routines, strengthen relationships, and restore a sense of control.
Read at Psychology Today
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