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Areas › Focus, starting, and ADHD › Screens and attention
Once distress counts as ordinary it stops being reported. Nobody mentions it at home, nobody brings it to an appointment, and years can pass with something treatable being treated as weather. Part of the work, whether you are the parent or the clinician or the person themselves, is to take it gently back out of the category of normal. Not by alarming anybody. Just by saying that widespread and fine are two different things, and asking how long it has been like this.
It is in the remembrance of God that hearts find peace (Quran 13:28). A settled state is named there, and it makes a useful measure to hold up against a mood everyone has agreed to call normal.
الرعد
ٱلَّذِينَ ءَامَنُواْ وَتَطۡمَئِنُّ قُلُوبُهُم بِذِكۡرِ ٱللَّهِۗ أَلَا بِذِكۡرِ ٱللَّهِ تَطۡمَئِنُّ ٱلۡقُلُوبُ
those who have faith and whose hearts find peace in the remembrance of God- truly it is in the remembrance of God that hearts find peace
Qur’an 13:28read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
In a set of self-report studies, heavier media multitasking went along with more everyday attention failures, more cognitive errors and more mind wandering, which the authors describe as an association rather than a demonstrated cause. What it does show is how widely these complaints are reported. Being common is exactly what makes them easy to wave away, and nothing in those studies says whether any particular person should be concerned.
Ralph BC, Thomson DR, Cheyne JA, Smilek D. (2014). Media multitasking and failures of attention in everyday life.. Psychological research doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
People only ask for help with things they believe are unusual, so anything that feels universal goes unsaid.
Sometimes the scrolling is not really about the scrolling. It is about the coursework, or the conversation, or the thing you have not let yourself think about since March.
You are already off your phone somewhere. In lessons, at work, in the pool, driving. That is worth more than it sounds.
Before a phone gets taken away, it is worth asking what else goes with it. For a lot of young people the group chat is where their friendships actually live, and losing it leaves them alone at the moment they most need someone.