April 27, 2026 · Maddie Connors

The rise of the ‘Adderall novel’: How our attention spans are changing the way authors write

While shortening attention spans may be to blame for the shift in literature, Huehls argues that some writers are intentionally engaging with it. The resulting novels are poignant, urgent and brilliant. “There’s also a lot of interesting formal experimentation — taking technological forms and integrating them, or running literary questions up against those forms,” he said, citing writers like Offill, Jennifer Egan, Tao Lin and Ling Ma, who have found ways to merge technology into the literary canon.