[alfapla]

Humanity is suffering from a collective ADD epidemic under the spell of computers and internet and children are getting the worst of it. Computers are the last thing that kids under 12 need in a classroom. Teach them something that involves quiet focus, like 19th century cursive writing.

[icebraining]

Humanity is suffering from a collective ADD epidemic

No, it's not. The US and a few other developed countries are suffering from an epidemic of ADD diagnoses. Unrestricted computer use is certainly not a good education policy, but there's no evidence that it causes ADD.

[prodmerc]

Oh, it causes ADD, alright. Without a proper way to use it, the Internet just leads people to jump between pages, bits of information and topics, which often devolves in distraction on the many entertainment bullshit resources out there...

You can't read a book properly when you know you can just jump to the middle or the end to see the most interesting bits.

[Lawtonfogle]

Books just leads to people to jump between books, bits of information and topics, which often devolves in distraction on many of the entertainment books out there. Oral tradition was so much better because you had to be focused on the expert who was giving the information and you had to learn it to a great enough detail you could recount the information yourself. With a book you can just jump to the interesting bits, but with oral tradition you have to stick around for the whole story.

And lest you think I am just being facetious, this was a legitimate criticism of writing back in the day.

>Writing, Phaedrus, has this strange quality, and is very like painting; for the creatures of painting stand like living beings, but if one asks them a question, they preserve a solemn silence. And so it is with written words; you might think they spoke as if they had intelligence, but if you question them, wishing to know about their sayings, they always say only one and the same thing. And every word, when once it is written, is bandied about, alike among those who understand and those who have no interest in it, and it knows not to whom to speak or not to speak; when ill-treated or unjustly reviled it always needs its father to help it; for it has no power to protect or help itself.

http://www.english.illinois.edu/-people-/faculty/debaron/482...

[icebraining]

"People reading on the Internet are easily distracted" is not the same as "having ADD".

[prodmerc]

Well, if it looks like ADD and acts like ADD, it is ADD.

Asperger's, for example, has been pushed under "autism spectrum disorder". And Pluto is not a planet.

I could see Internet overload/distraction be diagnosed as some ADD-like disorder, or the main cause of it...