Even kids who don't have ADD can't attend for long. Two changes in the past 50 years, Hallowell said, contributed heavily to the nation's decreasing attention span. We've had an incredible explosion of electronic technology,'' he said. We are all just buzzing. We are wired.
Kids especially are super stimulated.
The other change is we're disconnected personally. Families are not the same. Interpersonal connectedness is not there, and institutional support is weakened. Dawes estimates 13 of the 100 students in her classes are on individual education plans for attention deficit while a handful of others have undiagnosed attention issues. But, she said, the other three-quarters of the class needs structure in their lives merely because they are at a turbulent age.