Difficulty Curve? Attention Spans changing?

[JayJaySut]

kid diagnosed w/ ADHD = Parents buy drugs
Parents buy drugs= $$$$
Therefore, more kids w/ ADHD=more $$$$
That's pretty much it.

There really aren't a lot more options these days the whole thing is just over saturated, there aren't any more good TV shows now then there were in the past but you definitely have to look hard to find them. "let's see what do I want to watch, reruns, Ancient Aliens, or (insert crime drama here)?" They might as well just call MTV the annoying douchebag channel and The History channel the buying/selling/conspiracy channel. I honestly don't think kids have changed that much people's memories can't be trusted because they might be looking with nostalgia and all the studies have proved is that there are more diagnoses for ADHD, not that there is more. Things change but at the end of the day people are still the same, some good, some bad.

[Menegrothx]

wait wait wait, modern cartoons are hyperactive?

Most cartoons nowadays still have nothing on Tex Avery.

I'm not very familiar with those, but from what I've seen, they weren't much different from classic Looney Tunes and Disney shorts. No problems with pacing, had high quality animation and soundtrack etc. Although many Pop Eye, Donald Duck, Tom&Jerry and such older cartoons did have violence, there really weren't all that many action cartoons before the 1980s, which could also help to explain the difference between the two.

Don't mean to turn this into a thread about cartoons but anyways

I showed my big sister an episode of Earthworm Jim once and the one thing she mentioned about the series is how cartoons of that era seem to be really hectic and hyperactive. Ed, Edd n Eddy is good example of a modern cartoon that feels really ADHD at times (it has some surprisingly clever dialogue at times though). I guess I don't notice it as much as I was raised on 90s&early 2000 cartoons (though I watched my fair share Disney classics and calm and nonviolent cartoons from the late 1970s and 1980s too), but generally when talking about cartoons, people older than me seem to always comment how bad and hyper active modern cartoons are (the fact that many of them are designed to sell toys doesn't help the fact). Remember South Park's Pokémon parody?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8BgE2sQ_Ry0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XeoB1voCit4

Old animated feature films didn't have those "wacky sidekick characters who "humorously" crash around and cause a lot of chaos and ruckus throughout the movie

When you watch animation made by the younger generation on youtube (Egoraptor, Spazkidin3D etc), they're even more hyperactive

Also it should be noted that a cartoon can have fight scenes and/or really fast paced scenes with out feeling hyperactive, it's a matter of pacing, animation etc. Not overloading the viewers senses with too fast shots, too much noise, too fast dialogue, too little time transition time between scenes etc.

Just some observations