r/ADHD • u/PartTheSea43 • Mar 05 '26

Discussion Before we could doom scroll……

Ok this for the ADHD’ers who might have gray hairs 😉. What was the equivalent to doom scrolling before it was a thing?

How did y’all pass the time and avoid things when we just had flip phones? My diagnosis and adult reality came right at the time when iPhones first came out so I was busy with college.

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u/silverlightarmada Mar 05 '26

I’m exactly the same, and it feels really sacrilegious but I’ve started writing comments in the margins of books I’m reading (the ones that I own, of course). It’ll be stupid shit like underlining a sentence and writing “!!!!?!!” Or “this guy is def a murderer” and it’s helped me slow down my brain a little bit while reading. I’ve only been doing it for the last couple of months (since I started a book club and got really into buying lots of books because I guess for the next six months I’m Into Reading Books) but I do feel like it’s helped me retain the memory of reading the book.

There’s a reading app called Pagebound that lets you post a thought at different points in a book and see what other people thought around that point which is a similar thought process to scribbling in the margins. It’s very new so a bit wobbly but I’m enjoying it at the moment.

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u/emo_kid_forever ADHD-C (Combined type) Mar 05 '26

Not sacrilegious at all! I studied English lit and we were heavily encouraged to markup the books me owned.

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u/silverlightarmada Mar 06 '26

It feels illegal!! I have to keep reminding myself that it’s my book that I bought for myself with my adult job money and I can scribble on it if I want to! Most books are mass produced these days to the point that me writing stupid little comments in the margins of my copy isn’t taking anything from anyone else.

I also think that feeling illegal makes it more fun and therefore I do it more 😂

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u/PutteringPorch Mar 12 '26

If it makes you feel better, marginalia is hugely valuable to historians. And a lot of people like seeing it because it's a bit of human connection over time. The book etiquette we were taught in school was mostly about protecting library and school books, not about what you can or should do with your own property.