Sterotyping: A Growing Up In An Electronic World

Doctors are not always using the full scale of information for diagnosis. There is a bias among some medical professionals, meaning that more, boys or ethnic children are diagnosed because of stereotyping: boys are always hyper and over excitable and certain ethnic groups are always in trouble so it must be ADHD. Also, some parents and school officials will over exaggerate the child’s symptoms so that they can have them medicated to calm them down during certain settings: school, church or social setting. Consequently, this will put pressure on some doctors to diagnose the child without being fully informed of the child’s true behavior. (Hinshaw & Scheffler)

Children these days are growing up in an electronic world. Whereas children from thirty

years ago, did not have the technology that is available today. Those children spent their days outdoors and were not exposed to the over-stimulation of today’s technology. Now a days children spend the majority of their day in front of a screen: television, computer or phone. Consequently, more children show less ability to pay attention during their everyday activities, giving teachers and parents the illusion of the child being inattentive. (Newmark 2016)
When ADHD comes to mind, most think of a childhood disease, children who cannot sit still or pay attention, but adults have ADHD as well. Children who were diagnosed with ADHD at a young age, only sixty percent of them carried it on into adulthood, which is roughly four percent of the adult population.