People blame video games and faster cuts in movies or television for causing ADHD. But, media companies study things. There is a lot of data collected on habits.
So, is the tail wagging the dog, or… are media companies making adjustments to an undiagnosed customer base who eventually goes and gets a diagnosis
I’ve been fidgety my entire life, and I was born before the widespread epidemic of video games. I never read many books, because ADHD made reading very difficult. I could watch a movie and a quick blurb out of an encyclopedia and have the same understanding as someone who read the big thick book about the subject.
At one point in time, I was going to do a sketch comedy show and put it on local television. I began to study television in a very different way. I started to count how many camera changes there were in a scene. My first test was Sanford and Son. I counted and I was sort of amazed at how many times the camera changed angle. I was even more amazed that it had an impact on my sense. Like, the rhythm of the camera change fell in line with the flow of the jokes. [If you have never done a deep dive in the comedic life of Red Foxx, I highly recommend it. Not only was he a master at building jokes, writing jokes, telling jokes, but he was an elder statemen in comedy (He once loaned Pat Morita money to pay rent, and did not expect it to be paid back, but expected Pat to succeed so he could loan money to someone else in need)].
Redd Foxx vs. VH1
Then, I switched over to some show on VH1 (is that still a thing?) and did the same counting experiment. I was flabbergasted… YES… I said what I said and I meant what I said… Sanford and Son was a lot at about five cuts in a minute. The show on Vh1 was almost one per second. Like, what kind of maniac video editor put this together?
But another pattern emerged. Sanford and Son was 22 minutes. Take away a minute for the opening with one of the greatest theme songs ever. Then take away a minute for the end credits. And then take away a total of another minute for the fades used to go into commercials. This left a solid 19 minutes of material produced. The show on Vh1 looped so much material. Like, X… then coming up next is Y… then coming back… you just witnessed X, and we’ll be showing Y soon. Then they show some z… then finally show Y. The minute of Y is stretched out to be used for three minutes of material without furthering the story or adding any new information.
Now, the question comes up, is this style dumbing down America, or is it stooping down to cater to the dumbed down America?
I know that, as an Autistic person, I process every piece of information presented to me. Often, there is follow up research so I can understand what they hell was just said. If I don’t get a joke online, on TV, on the radio, I go and dig in and find the source of the material, the context, or any background so that I can get it. Most of the time, it is dumb and still not funny, but at least I know it is unfunny because of the person presenting the material and not just because I don’t understand or “get”.
Is ADHD an Epidemic?
Like Autism and other mental conditions, I truly feel that the rise in ADHD numbers is because of identification and not because of an epidemic. It’s like seeing a raccoon in your trash can and thinking, “Damn, there’s a weird masked baby bear in my trash can.” Then because you are a filthy human who doesn’t clean up the mess, there is another raccoon. See, the first raccoon told the other raccoon where to get some tasty human trash, and now there are two raccoons. And the silly human thinks, “Oh, damn, they doubled in numbers, must be an epidemic.”
It’s not, it’s just we raccoons now know there is a place to get trash without getting shot. And soon, there will be more in your line of sight, not because there is a boom in the population of raccoons, but simply because you can now see them and they are brave enough to come into the light.
