What the closest study actually found
The one supplied study that touches earworms did not set out to compare people with and without ADHD. It analyzed a decade of user-generated posts from the r/ADHD Reddit community and used large language models to sort the musical content into categories, including focus music, general-purpose music, and "stuck songs" [1]. The fact that stuck songs emerged as a distinct category is the key observation: people with ADHD write about songs that get stuck, and those posts were common enough to analyze as their own group.
The same study also looked at the musical features of 9,215 tracks across those categories and found that instrumentalness showed the largest difference between contexts, which the authors interpret as a sign of distinctive musical preferences among people with ADHD [1]. That is a finding about which music gets chosen, not about how often songs get stuck or how much distress they cause. The authors frame music selection as a possible tool for cognitive and emotional self-regulation, but that is a proposed interpretation rather than a demonstrated function [1].
Why a direct answer is still missing
To know whether ADHD worsens earworms, you would need a study that measures earworm frequency or bothersomeness in people with ADHD and compares it with people without ADHD, or tracks earworms alongside ADHD symptoms. The supplied evidence contains no such comparison. The Reddit analysis describes what people in one online community talk about; it cannot tell us whether their earworms are more common, longer-lasting, or more intrusive than anyone else's [1].
The other supplied papers illustrate how far the available research sits from this question. One large Swedish cohort study examined whether starting ADHD medication was linked to lower mortality and found an association with reduced all-cause and unnatural-cause mortality, but it says nothing about music or earworms [2]. Another followed a British cohort born in 1970 and found that childhood ADHD symptoms were associated with modest reductions in later employment and pay, with academic performance at age 10 explaining almost half of the employment variation [3]. Neither study measured involuntary musical imagery, so neither can support or rule out an ADHD–earworm link.
What a plausible link would look like, and what it would not prove
If ADHD did make earworms worse, the most natural place to look would be attention. Earworms are involuntary: a tune surfaces without being summoned, and the struggle people describe is often about getting it to stop or fade. A condition marked by difficulty controlling where attention goes could plausibly make such intrusions harder to dismiss. The Reddit analysis is consistent with music playing a regulatory role in ADHD experience, since the authors interpret musical selection as a possible self-regulation strategy [1]. But consistency is not confirmation, and the study did not measure attention control against earworm frequency.
There is also a selection problem built into the evidence. The Reddit posts come from people who chose to join an ADHD community and chose to write about music, so the sample is not representative of people with ADHD generally [1]. A high volume of stuck-song posts could reflect that music is simply a popular topic in that community rather than that earworms are unusually severe. The study's design can describe themes in conversation; it cannot establish prevalence or compare groups.
So what should you take away?
If you have ADHD and feel plagued by earworms, the evidence neither confirms nor dismisses that experience. What the supplied research does support is narrower: stuck songs are a recognizable part of how people with ADHD discuss music online, and music appears to be used in varied and deliberate ways in that community [1]. That is a reason to take the experience seriously as a topic, not a reason to conclude that ADHD is the cause.
The broader ADHD papers in the evidence base point in a different direction entirely, toward medication and long-term life outcomes [2][3], and they offer no information about earworms. Until a study directly compares involuntary musical imagery in people with and without ADHD, the most accurate statement is that the question remains open, and that the existing signal is a description of what people talk about rather than a measure of how bad their earworms are [1].
Sources used in this answer
The role of music in ADHD: A multi-dimensional computational and theoretical analysis
An analysis of r/ADHD posts identified 'stuck songs' as a distinct category of musical experience and found that instrumentalness showed the largest difference across musical contexts, suggesting distinctive musical preferences among people with ADHD.
ADHD Pharmacotherapy and Mortality in Individuals With ADHD
In a Swedish cohort, initiating ADHD medication within three months of diagnosis was associated with lower all-cause and unnatural-cause mortality over two years, but not with natural-cause mortality.
How do childhood ADHD symptoms affect labour market outcomes?
In a British cohort born in 1970, a one standard deviation increase in childhood ADHD symptoms was associated with up to two percentage points lower employment and four percentage points lower pay, with academic performance at age 10 explaining almost half of the employment variation.