Consumer electronics are a part of our everyday lives. Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter are being refreshed every second of every day. Phone applications are making things easier to do than ever, but whenever we have to wait more than a few seconds for something, we become upset. What is the assimilation of consumer electronics doing to our psychic apparatus? As consumer electronics become more integrated deeper into our everyday lifestyle, instant gratification becomes much more prevalent. Attention disorders have increased rapidly over the past decade, people are using their amount of likes on social networking as a feeling of self-worth, and consumer electronics have made it so we need things as fast as possible and presented beautifully. .
Attention Deficit and Electronics .
The rise in attention disorders from the period of 2003 to 2010 has seen significant increases in all groups. This increase in the attention disorders can be linked to the amount of total daily screen time of preschoolers and adolescents. For example, ADHD diagnostics have increased by an average of 3% from 1997-2006. Linking this back to electronic usage, the amount of screen time in children aged 6-11 logged just over 2 hours of screen time on a daily basis in 2004. In current years, screen time use in adolescents has increased almost 4-fold to nearly 8 hours a day. This staggering growth in screen usage can be associated with the 42% increase of ADHD diagnosis's from 2003-4 to 2011-12. Perhaps it is the fact that adolescents that parents who gravitate their children towards more consumer electronic usage leads to over stimulation and attention deficit symptoms. Researches are circumspect to make the correlation between ADHD and Screen usage, but people are nearly twice as likely to develop an attention disorder if they overuse consumer electronics. .
To associate the idea of ADHD back to the mindset of instant gratification, it is important to recognize the connection between ADHD and the reward deficiency syndrome.
