Just enter the letters “ADHD” into a search box and you’ll see. It’s like spilling blood into the water around Amity Island. The sharks begin to circle almost instantly. For younger generations, it’s online influencers. The ADHD hashtag on TikTok has more than 20 billion views; #adhdawareness has nearly a billion. And views mean money. #ADHD delivers clips and survival tips; hot girls in a hot mess, and not just an explanation for your unreliability but a blanket excuse. Are you always late? Do you let your friends and family down? Don’t worry! Don’t sweat it! That’s just your ADHD. Nothing to be done. Only a fascist would hold you accountable.
For older adults, the sharks come in the form of tests and then tailored life plans delivered to your inbox — thanks Impulse! — for just (let me check) $39.98 a week. (Argh! What was I thinking?) The tests pop up everywhere now, on every internet page I visit. And I marvel at the speed with which they convert self-pitying curiosity into an established diagnosis in a few quick tick-box stages. 1) Find out if you have ADHD. 2) What’s your ADHD type? 3) Here’s how to manage your unique ADHD type. A little begging the question, a little sunk cost fallacy and Bob’s your direct debit.
All the age-old huckster tricks are deployed in the adult ADHD grift. A TIME magazine piece, while of course not skeptical, did at least note that approximately half the ADHD TikToks made assertions so vague almost everyone could feel they applied to them. “If you don’t like doing homework, you have ADHD”; “If you zone out during meetings, you probably have ADHD.” These are known as Barnum statements, named after the showman P.T. Barnum whose catchphrase was: “A sucker is born every minute.”
Britain’s National Health Service has been so overwhelmed by the rise in adult ADHD that it’s launched a new taskforce, and as I read about it, up popped an ad for another clinic: “The letter you see here defines your ADHD type!” “Only adults with ADHD can solve this problem!”
Related: Is ADHD overdiagnosed and overtreated?
Yes to both. Next questions?