You sit down to answer one email. Twenty minutes later you’ve checked the weather, replied to a group chat about someone’s birthday, watched a video of a goat in pyjamas, and opened four new tabs you swear you’ll read later. The email is still there, unanswered, quietly judging you.

If that sounds familiar, you’ve probably wondered at some point whether it’s ADHD. You’re not alone. Interest in adult ADHD has exploded in the last few years, helped along by social media, where a relatable 30-second video can make almost anyone feel seen. Some of those people do have ADHD and are finally getting answers. Others are living in a world that has been very deliberately designed to pull their attention in fifty directions at once.

So how do you tell the difference? Let’s look at what the research actually says.

What the research says

ADHD is a neurodevelopmental condition, which is a technical way of saying it’s built into how the brain develops rather than something you pick up along the way. To meet diagnostic criteria, several symptoms of inattention and/or hyperactivity-impulsivity need to have been present before the age of 12, show up in more than one area of life (say, work and home), and genuinely get in the way of how you function. The Australian ADHD Clinical Practice Guideline also makes the point that ADHD in adults often looks different from the stereotype of the boy bouncing off the classroom walls. Day to day, adult ADHD often shows up as restlessness, disorganisation, time blindness and a long trail of half-finished projects.

It’s also more common than many people think. A 2021 global meta-analysis estimated that around 2.6% of adults have ADHD that started in childhood and carried on into adulthood, and that close to 7% of adults experience significant ADHD symptoms when childhood history isn’t taken into account. That gap is interesting in itself. Plenty of adults have ADHD-like symptoms without having had the condition all along.

Which brings us to your phone. Attention researcher Gloria Mark has tracked how long people stay focused on one screen before switching, and her work puts the average at just 47 seconds. A two-year study of more than 2,500 teenagers found that those using digital media most frequently were more likely to go on to report ADHD symptoms (about 10% versus 5% of those with low use). That study was in teenagers rather than adults, and the researchers were careful to say it doesn’t prove phones cause ADHD. But it does suggest a constant stream of notifications can make anyone feel, and act, more scattered.

And social media isn’t always the most reliable narrator. When researchers looked at the 100 most popular ADHD videos on TikTok, 52% were rated as misleading. Only 21% were considered useful. That doesn’t mean the people posting are wrong about their own experience, but a relatable video is not the same thing as a diagnosis.

Myth vs fact

So which one is it?

A useful way to think about it is this: modern-life distraction is mostly about your environment, while ADHD is mostly about your wiring. Change the environment and everyday distraction usually eases. Put your phone in another room, go on holiday, or sit in a library, and most people find their focus creeping back. ADHD tends to come along for the ride wherever you go.

History matters too. If you were the child whose school reports said “capable, but needs to apply themselves”, who lost a jumper a week, and whose bedroom looked like a small weather event had passed through, that’s worth paying attention to. If your focus was fine until about 2019 and has been slipping since you got a new phone and a busier job, the story may be different.

The other big question is impact. Most of us lose our keys now and then. When forgetfulness, disorganisation or impulsivity are regularly costing you jobs, relationships, money or your sense of yourself, that’s when it’s worth looking more closely.

It’s also worth knowing that stress, poor sleep, anxiety, depression, burnout and even some medical conditions can all look remarkably like ADHD. A tired, anxious brain is a distractible brain. That’s one of the reasons a proper assessment takes more than a quiz.

Try this for a week

Before you go down a late-night rabbit hole of online quizzes, try a small experiment. None of these will diagnose anything, but they’ll give you useful information either way.

When it might be time for an assessment

If your week-long experiment didn’t change much, if the patterns go all the way back to childhood, and if they’re getting in the way of the life you want, it may be worth talking to a psychologist.

A thorough adult ADHD assessment isn’t a single questionnaire. It usually involves a detailed interview about your history, validated rating scales, input from someone who knows you well, and a careful look at whether something else (like anxiety, depression or sleep problems) could better explain what’s going on. Sometimes the answer is ADHD. Sometimes it’s something else entirely, which is just as useful to know, because it points you towards the right support.

Either way, the goal is the same: a clearer understanding of how your brain works, and practical strategies that make everyday life a bit easier. If medication is something you’d like to explore after a diagnosis, that conversation happens with your GP or a psychiatrist.

If you’d like to look into an ADHD assessment with Sarah K Psychology, you’ll find our fees and how to get started under Assessments on our Services page. And if you’ve made it this far without checking your phone, well done.

References

Australian ADHD Professionals Association (2022). Australian Evidence-Based Clinical Practice Guideline for Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder.

Mark, G. (2023). Attention Span: A Groundbreaking Way to Restore Balance, Happiness and Productivity. Hanover Square Press.

Ra, C. K., et al. (2018). Association of digital media use with subsequent symptoms of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder among adolescents. JAMA, 320(3), 255–263.

Song, P., et al. (2021). The prevalence of adult attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder: A global systematic review and meta-analysis. Journal of Global Health, 11, 04009.

Yeung, A., Ng, E., & Abi-Jaoude, E. (2022). TikTok and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder: A cross-sectional study of social media content quality. The Canadian Journal of Psychiatry, 67(12), 899–906.

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