Does Advertising “Cause” ADHD by Training Us to Have a Short Attention Spans?

Or just that some savvy advertisers, websites, and social media have identified ADHD children and adults as an exploitable market?

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

“There are two methods of fighting — the one by persuasion, the other by force; the first method is that of man, the second of beasts; but as the first method is often insufficient, one must have recourse to the second. It is therefore necessary for a prince to know well how to use both the beast and the man."
— Machiavelli, The Prince

Here’s an odd coincidence: In Russell A. Barkley’s classic book Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder: A Handbook for Diagnosis and Treatment, he points out several studies documenting that children with ADHD (particularly those who also show signs of Conduct Disorder) are significantly more likely to smoke cigarettes.

In a recent article in USA Today, it was reported that tobacco giant RJR had found that rival brand Marlboro was successful in attracting new and young smokers because Marlboro advertising appealed to young men who were “rebels, risk takers, and those who liked sports and rock music.” Wanting to go after this same market, RJR developed the Joe Camel ad campaign, rocketing that brand to the top of the sales charts with fierce brand loyalty among young adults, teenagers, and preteens. It’s now estimated that 3000 children begin smoking every day in America, and that 1000 of them will eventually die of smoking-related diseases.

Could it be that advertising and screen usage “cause” ADHD? Or just that some savvy advertisers, websites, and social media have identified ADHD children and adults as an exploitable market? (Remember the “impulse buy” items that line the check-out areas of grocery stores?)

At first glance, the former seems absurd while the latter makes sense. And, in fact, impulsive people have long been considered the salesperson’s dream, with seminars and sales trainings that have, for decades, stressed the importance of getting the customer to “buy now,” whether the product is insurance or a new car.

But could it be possible that modern advertising practices do play a role in the explosion of ADHD and ADHD-like behaviors we see in the Western world?

Since the time of Aristotle, philosophers have pointed out that people are almost never static; it’s not the nature of life to rest in one place or one state. Physics teaches this same concept in the notion of entropy—it’s the nature of all things to decay into chaos unless continual energy is added to the system to prevent decay and collapse. Another example can be seen by observing the nature of an ADHD teenager’s bedroom when, for a week, his parent doesn’t encourage him to clean it up.

The simple fact is that we’re almost always either moving toward something or away from something. We’re never stationary, static, held in one place, no matter how much that may seem to be the case.

Many people don’t realize this (or that they can exert control over this, but that’s another discussion, which you’ll find in my book Adult ADHD: How to Succeed as a Hunter in a Farmer's World). Even fewer realize that their moving-toward or moving-away-from behavior is nearly always the result of a specific strategy to help them get what they want in life.

The Pain-Pleasure Continuum

The world of humans, we’re told by psychologists such as Leif Roland, is made up of people who are either “moving toward pleasure, or moving away from pain.” While everybody is theoretically capable of using either strategy, most people use one or the other as their primary way to stay motivated.

Those who use the “moving away from pain” strategy to keep themselves motivated visualize the terrible things that will happen to them if they fail to perform or reach their goals. When they begin to slack off at work, they think of the pain of being unemployed or yelled at by the boss, and that image pushes them from behind in a forward direction.

Similarly, when they’re presented with the possibility of poor social or personal choices (using drugs, having unprotected sex, skipping school, dropping out, driving too fast), they visualize the potential negative consequences of these behaviors. This pain-avoidance strategy causes them to decide to not engage in that behavior.

At the other end of the spectrum, people who use a “moving toward pleasure” strategy hold different mental images, feelings, or discussions with themselves to keep motivated. When they feel the urge to slack off at work, they visualize the raise they may get if they do an excellent job, or how good the praise from the boss will feel, or the warm glow of the recognition of their peers.

They may even imagine the envy of others and hold to this picture: it’s something to move toward. When times are tough for these folks, they look for the next thing, the new future, the golden opportunity, using that light as a magnet to draw them forward.

Both of these strategies are useful, and both have their appropriate times and places. If we understand the primary motivational strategy a person uses, then we can use that to keep them motivated. A “from pain” person will respond better to the threat of a failing grade, whereas a “toward pleasure” person will be more motivated by rewards.

Where this starts to break down, however, and where it may have to do with helping answer the question, “Why Do We Have ADHD?” is when a person becomes stuck in one particular strategy and therefore loses access to the other.

A person stuck in the “from/avoid pain” strategy, for example, may become so obsessed with the idea of avoiding pain that they become completely averse to taking any sorts of risks. They avoid social situations because they fear making a fau paux, or avoid business confrontations for fear of bringing the wrath of the boss. They hesitate to make decisions (or agonize over them for morbidly long periods of time) because they’re worried about the consequences of making the wrong decision.

On the other hand, a person stuck in the “move toward pleasure” strategy without access to an Avoid Pain strategy to balance them out may make wildly inappropriate decisions. They choose to take drugs because of the potential for a good feeling, for example, and fail to consider the consequences of the potential pain until they’re already broke or in jail.

If we consider ADHD to be composed primarily of the three behaviors of distractability, impulsivity, and risk-taking, it would seem that folks with ADHD are more solidly in the “Move Toward Pleasure” camp than in the “Avoid Pain” arena.

They’re distractible because they’re looking for the Next Pleasure. Much as a hungry person walking down the street will notice all the restaurants and bakeries, the pleasure-seeker is distracted by all the potential pleasure around him at the time. He may pursue these impulsively—without considering the potential pain they may cause—and thus make decisions which lead to the death of businesses, jobs, and relationships.

So, in this context, it’s possible to redefine ADHD as being a characteristic of those people who occupy the extreme end of the pleasure-seeking spectrum, and hang out very rarely in the Pain- avoiding areas.

But if this is the case, where does this come from? Why would we have this type of ADHD?

One possible explanation could be that modern children, particularly in the middle-and upper-middle class, where most ADHD is diagnosed, are suffering from a surfeit of comfort. They rarely experience pain (hunger, deprivation, etc.) as did their grandparents who lived through the Great Depression.

They haven’t developed a strong sense of the need to avoid pain. Life has been easy; everything has essentially been handed to them on a silver platter. Another, even more insidious explanation is that our children are being conditioned to seek pleasure at the expense of learning how to avoid pain.

Five decades ago Vance Packard exposed the emerging marriage of psychology and advertising in his landmark book The Hidden Persuaders. While some of Packard’s claims bordered on the paranoiac (the naked women he saw in the ice cubes in the liquor company’s ads may have been more of his own personal Rorschach test than an intentional reality), nonetheless Packard did make an important and vivid contribution. Advertising in the 1950s and 1960s very much became a science, and that science was rooted in the notion of positive associative conditioning.

First, focus groups in an advertising company are held to determine what the strongest positive psychological images are that a person may respond to in relation to the product. Are women most attracted to a perfume’s association with pastoral fields of wildflowers? Or are they most drawn to the muscled hunk who may hold them in his arms when he gets a whiff of their fragrance?

Thus an ad is created which continuously alternates between the most powerful known pleasurable image and the product.

The ideal result occurs when consumers walk into a store, notice a product on the shelf, and feel good when they see it. It’s entirely irrational — or at least beyond the regions of rationality — and is experienced by most people at a level so visceral it’s unconscious. They can’t explain why they love a particular brand, but they just do.

Advertising, Screens, and TV

Because the use of Approach Pleasure psychology is such a powerful strategy in advertising, the Avoid Pain strategy is rarely used. Instead of saying, “Use our deodorant so your armpits won’t smell like the town dump,” advertisers show images of attractive people of the opposite sex swooning when they get a whiff of the newly-aromatized pits.

For the average child or adult watching an average amount of television, each day brings—literally—thousands of these Seek Pleasure messages. Is it any wonder, then, that this generation’s predominant motivational strategy is to seek pleasure? They’ve been taught that since before they could speak, watching cartoons and the Seek Pleasure commercials for everything from toys to breakfast cereals.

Another aspect of an individual’s life strategies has to do with the notion of problem-solving. How do they react to stress? How do they evaluate and solve problems? With what depth can they see and analyze future situations and future problems, the consequences of their choices and their actions? Will they play checkers or chess—look for the quick fix or the five-moves-ahead strategy?

Again, here we see television as a powerful formative model.

On TV, virtually all of life’s problems are solved in thirty to sixty minutes. On the rare occasion when that’s not possible, the viewer can rest secure in the knowledge that the solution will come a week later, in the sequel. (Look at how frustrated and outraged many viewers become at sequels!)

If the first and most important message of television is always to seek pleasure and not bother with avoiding pain, then the second message is that all life’s problems can be resolved quickly and easily. This, of course, reinforces the idea of the relative unimportance of avoiding pain: after all, why avoid something that will quickly be resolved in any case?

This additional theory of why we have so much ADHD posits that the current explosion of ADHD is traceable to the introduction of television. Modern psychologically-driven advertising methods penetrate the daily lives of people from birth through childhood and adolescence, and even into adulthood.

Without the reality-check of something like the Great Depression or a World War, modern children are left assuming that life is about seeking pleasure at all times, and that avoiding pain is only a nuisance. Seek Pleasure becomes such a predominant part of their internal motivational landscape that they lose most of their ability to view a situation in terms of the pain it may cause. They don’t realize that there are possible choices to minimize that pain.

This theory also offers an answer to the nagging question about the parents of today’s ADHD children, young adults and Baby Boomers. If ADHD is genetic, and most ADHD children have at least one similarly-afflicted parent, why was the parent able to finish school and keep a job, whereas the child is having trouble completing the seventh grade?

If we take this theory as one of the causative factors for why we have ADHD, it would make sense that those children with the greatest tendency (genetically) toward ADHD would be the most affected by the conditioning of TV and advertising. It doesn’t mean ADHD isn’t genetic, nor does it mean that it’s entirely caused by TV and screens. But the combination is both powerful and often tragic.

Boomer parents, who weren’t bombarded with the Seek Pleasure images to which their children and grandchildren were subjected, were able to develop at least functional Avoid Pain strategies to balance out their Seek Pleasure natural proclivities.

There are two aspects to solving this problem: education and avoidance.

Education is the first and most important. I remember well the first time I was able to point out to one of my children lies in a TV advertising campaign, and how shocked she was to discover that everything said on TV wasn’t the truth.

Some people apparently haven’t yet had this experience, and uncritically accept virtually everything advertisers shove at them, from foods to political candidates. It is possible, however, to teach our children how to critically examine an advertiser’s claims, to find the self-serving distortions or misrepresentations of truth, and to accept or discard calls to action based on this knowledge.

With regard to avoidance, experts like Marie Winn and Vance Packard suggest that children should simply be kept away from large amounts of TV and screen viewing, so their exposure to and conditioning from advertising is at a minimum. This will provide them with the self-assurance and independence of thought necessary to break through the impulse to seek pleasure uncritically whenever possible.