The Power of "being Seen": Exploring the Practice of Livestreaming Study Processes among ADHD Users

ADHD users repurpose commercial livestreaming platforms to overcome challenges with task initiation and sustained attention in learning. However, the mechanisms behind these practices remain underexplored. Through an initial analysis of social media posts and interviews with 8 ADHD users, we found that while the repurposing is largely effective initially-as visibility, playback feedback, and ambient audio successfully externalize executive control and scaffold focus-users face attention disruption, motivation drift, dependence, and identity anxiety over time. Yet users do not remain passive; they actively develop strategic adaptations, including decoupling visibility from interaction, cyclic tool rotation, and strategic high-stimulation support deployment. Our initial investigation provided insights into "distributed executive scaffolding,"where users dynamically reorganize social and technical resources to sustain self-regulation across contexts and timeframes, offering implications for designing future ADHD learning support tools. © 2026 the owner/author(s).