A Silly Thought

Like some other people I know, I have my best ideas in the shower. The rest of the day is up in the air.

Today in the shower I was thinking about people considered to have ADD or ADHD (essentially the same thing but the latter is like ADD with a crack addiction.) I was wondering why the US has the highest incidence of these "diseases" and why it's not something people have historically suffered with. It seems to be a new epidemic as of the mid 20th century.

Here's my thought on it. It's computers. We have a whole generation of kids growing up on computers. Instead of working with kids on isolated tasks (e.g. learning to read, riding a bike, learning to write, etc...) which require their attention we're plopping these kids in front of multi-tasking machines. The kid's mind quickly adapts to multi-tasking whenever it's engaged in anything and as a result when a person is forced into a situation that requires concentrated thinking, their mind automatically switches into gear to attend to a few other tasks. That's why their so scatter brained. That's why they get anxious. They have been trained to do 2+ tasks at once and when they're thrown into the situation of only having exactly one task to do (e.g. taking an exam, reading a book, sitting still anywhere) it's unnatural for them. And they respond like any other person would in an uncomfortable situation. They freak out.

So, the cure for these conditions: take the computer away, take the cell phone away, take the iPod away, and do a focused task. It'll take a while to condition the brain to focus on the one task but it'll happen. As is commonly said, Rome wasn't built in a day. Nor will this de-conditioning happen in a day.

There's my thesis topic. Anyone who's a psych major looking to do a doctoral dissertation, you now have your topic.

On a more athletic note, I weight lifted today for the first time in almost a week. And I spent substantial time working my very weak glutes. Hopefully this is going to isolate the problem I've been having and help make 2009 even better than 2008.