“College Students Aren’t The Only Ones Abusing Adderall”
This article focuses on non-medical Adderall use, a drug that is believed to frequent college campuses everywhere to keep students more focused while studying. But title implies that it isn’t only frequently used on college campuses like some articles in the news will lead you to believe. In fact, we learn that Adderall is used across many ages. This article is looking to inform a wide range of adults about who is actually using non-medical Adderall most frequently and how that compares to the perception that college student are the biggest abuser.
The first visual aid is a simple bar chart that compares different ages to the used of non-medical Adderall. But it also separates college students from their counterparts in the most common age bracket for college students, 18-22. While we might note that college students age 18-22 do have the highest percentage use of non-medical Adderall at over 14%, we can clearly tell that they are closely followed by 3 other groups that all have more than 10% use. Although this graphic is simple it is effective in showing the all-around use of this drug because it requires little additional explanation to understand the graph.
Later in the article, there is a comparison to selectivity of the school to non-medical Adderall use, shown by the second visual aid. We can see a clear positive correlation, as the school gets more selective the percentage of students using increases. And a few schools are highlighted to show where they fall on the graph. This graphic is not very effective; the four selected schools seem as though they were chosen at random, and I don’t think the graph accurately portrays what the rest of the article is trying to say. The graph alone would lead you to believe that the brightest of college students frequent Adderall most often to succeed, but from the reading we learn that it tends to be the students with lower GPAs at their respective college that abuse Adderall.