Focus Sound for ADHD: What a Review Found and What Nobody Can Promise

I'm not a doctor. This is a summary of what I read, not medical advice, and my app is not a treatment for anything.

What the review found

The review is by Joel Nigg and colleagues, published in 2024 in the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. It covered studies of children and college-age adults, 335 people in total.

Its conclusion, in the authors' words: "White and pink noise provide a small benefit on laboratory attention tasks for individuals with ADHD or high ADHD symptoms, but not for non-ADHD individuals."

For the comparison groups without ADHD it goes further. There, "white and pink noise had a negative effect".

The part I found most interesting

The same sound helped one group and got in the way of another.

That fits something I had noticed without being able to explain it. Some people say they can't work without background sound. Others say they can't work with it. Both are describing their own experience correctly. A sound doesn't have one effect on everybody.

So when a product says its sound "improves focus", the fair question is: whose?

What the review does not tell us

• It's about lab tasks. These are short attention tests, which are a long way from homework or a day at a job.
• It's about young people. The studies covered children and college-age adults.
• It's about white and pink noise only. Music, nature sounds and generated ambient sound were outside it. I explain the different kinds of noise in the colours of noise.
• The benefit was small. A write-up by the British Psychological Society notes that the researchers themselves say more high-quality studies are needed.

About brown noise

Brown noise is recommended a lot online for ADHD. The review says: "No studies of brown noise were identified."

That doesn't mean it does nothing. It means that, as of that review, nobody had checked. I compare it with what my app does in brown noise vs ambient sound.

Where my app stands

It hasn't been tested with ADHD by anyone. It isn't white or pink noise either, so the review doesn't cover it. I can't tell you it will help you.

Here is all I can say truthfully. I built it because I can't work in silence, and music and podcasts pull my attention away. That is one person's experience. It is not evidence.

Sound is cheap to try and easy to switch off. It is no substitute for treatment, and any question about treatment belongs with a doctor.

Sources

• Nigg et al. (2024), Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis: Do White Noise or Pink Noise Help With Task Performance in Youth With ADHD or With Elevated Attention Problems?
• Does pink noise really help you focus?, BPS Research Digest