You are who you are in Private

Appearances, diagnoses, and public persona

Source: Oladimeji on Pexels.

It’s that person you know all too well, outside of the social media grid and the confines of an endless wall of memes.

In an age where socialization is subtracted to the mere exchange of words on a blank, digital wall, we’re running into a severe divergence of who we are as people.

Better yet, the question that matters most isn’t being asked: Who do we become as our attention continually shifts from the physical to the digital?

While there aren’t any scientific accounts to corroborate our attention span shortening considerably over the past few decades, there is a case to be made for the shift in our focus.

This is clear in a study published in 2018, which followed the prevalence of children diagnosed with ADHD. The findings concluded that adolescents aged 4–17 diagnosed with ADHD had increased considerably, across subgroups by age, sex, race/ethnicity, family income, and geographic regions:

Source: JAMA Network Open, study. August 31, 2018.