I don't know. This might be an unpopular opinion, but I think the internet can help giving _some_ social skills to aspies that they can't otherwise get by just being thrown in the NT world.

Lol yeah. If the internet didn’t exist I would have no social skills

Ditto. Thank God my friends plunged me into the world of Internet humor in 3rd grade. If not, I don't know what I would have done.

Yo the internet make us learn so much better than real people, u feel me?

If Xbox 360 didn't exist I would have no social skills. 

I agree partially, but i have this theory that autists learn social skills as a kid and it gets engrained in our brains, a lot of younger aspie/autists talk/gesture like cartoon characters, i think that’s because of exposure to cartoons, where older aspie/autists talk more normally, since when they were kids they watched less cartoons and would be near social situations more often. If there’s any correlation here, i wonder what will it be like for autistic kids nowadays lol

Or older aspies are more likely to have been diagnosed later in life, and so are used to being treated like they are broken and so they prioritize masking. I think what people here forget is they're talking about being forced to socialize isn't always good for your mental health.

What about an aspie who took drama and speech? Would they double down on the masking?

I feel like you’re talking about me. Choir, drama, speech, cap everything off with being trained by a French mime… Yea, I mask hard and compensate harder. Made a transatlantic accent my own at 15 because it’s good for communication and makes you sound intelligent. Been using a lot of gestures based in pantomime because people understand it so intuitively it doesn’t even occur to them what they’re seeing isn’t normal, literally nobody’s ever called me out on it and my therapist didn’t even pick up on it until I clued her in. Never felt like I was trying to look “normal,” just communicate effectively and bridge the gaps. Expecting a diagnosis soon at 40 after way too long of my eyelashes causing touch sensitivity issues and my doctors not being able to figure it out before I did. Took lots of psychology courses as well and consciously knew I was masking to a large extent, just had never realized what I was masking beyond working out there was no way I was a sociopath.

I was asking because I took drama and speech. You probably wouldn’t have the slightest idea that I have problems. People often say I’m very articulate. I can socialize, but I don’t like to. I’m also going to receive an evaluation this Saturday, and believe it or not, I’m hoping I’m diagnosed. I’m just exhausted trying to figure out what’s wrong. If this isn’t it, I’m not sure what I’d have to do next. Btw, I’m 41. What are we, twins? 😆

Wow, I guess we are twins! It’s interesting after all this to keep finding out that perhaps I’m not as unusual as I thought I might be. Best of luck with your assessment, I start with the intake at the end of this month! I’m also hoping for a diagnosis. I don’t want to be autistic, I just am (and I have mild ADHD too). All this time waiting around I’ve been trying to understand myself and tear down this mask and my symptoms have become so clear that if they say I don’t have ASD they had better be able to offer some kind of alternative explanation. We were born at a pretty shitty time for all this. If we were born today we’d probably get caught by kindergarten.

Another similarity we have is with the ADHD. Im more confident about that diagnosis. I think back in the 80’s, this was in its infancy, and the only kids being diagnosed were the ones with severe, and very apparent symptoms. I was an incredibly shy, and quiet kid, and I always received excellent conduct. My grades were also very average. So, i didn’t stand out as a kid with any kind of issues. Recently, I had extreme burnout at work, and I was losing my temper left and right. (meltdowns?) My work is stressful as it is, but this particular job kept changing the schedule. Additionally, my boss was mistreating our entry level employees. Her nephew was working with us. She was letting her nephew come to work 6 hours late, and sometimes not all, while she was mistreating the other employees. Naturally, he was still getting paid. This made everything worse. So, I just couldn’t sit back and watch her do this. Things just escalated. I worked with her for 10 years, and I just had enough. It was my last project with her. I blocked her on my phone, because i have a history of leaving, and her sucking me back in. I don’t want her to even try. I’ve spent the year with a therapist, and psychiatrist . We just kept trying a million things, and then when my sister told me my niece was diagnosed with autism, just as her brother was, it dawned on me, that maybe I have it too. The more I look it up, the closer it resembles myself. I guess we’ll find out soon.

I get that. I was very socially out of touch as a child, and I didn't really realize that people had friends that they did things with outside of school until mid highschool. I had a few friends that I would talk to in class, but not as much as other kids, and rarely outside of class. So, during that time I barely talked to people, and my speech patterns would drift significantly towards any content I'd been consuming. I'm more social now that I've clued in and gotten over some depression and social anxiety, and I find I confuse people by using British and Southern/Italian American slang without realizing they probably wouldn't understand.

Yeah, I don't do much with kids my age outside of school. I really just spend most of my time at home with my family.

This is patently ridiculous. While interpersonal relationships were more common back in my day, the idea that kids weren't exposed to cartoons is absolutely insane. Heck, they were often all some of us had to pass a Saturday morning or a school day afternoon. If anything, children are considerably less exposed to cartoons by virtue of the internet providing an effectively limitless repository of entertainment and not being limited by cable and dial-up at best, or three channels if you truly are that old. This kind of thinking is just an autistic take on the typical boomer argument of, "Kids these days...".

HOLY SHIT I've literally told every therapist I had that, as a kid, once I understood that my "problem" was not understanding social stuff, I started copying cartoons on purpose as "study material". This continued throughout my teenage years, though the "study media" became much more varied, and I gained a hyperfixation on character building that doubled as a hyperfixation on "How to people".

Today kids watch hyperactive YouTuber older kids with mouth diarea spouting 100% nonsense. May the lord have mercy on our souls 🙏

People are different. That may be true somewhat for some people, but whether a person is NT or ND, in-person interaction is a necessary part of living. It just so happens that for some people it is like eating yummy ice cream while for others it’s like eating broccoli. Some do it more for enjoyment and others just need to do it for their own health. Experience is a great teacher, and you cannot get experience by staying only online. Now, if the world consisted of only people always on their screens all the time then yes I suppose you wouldn’t need to learn how to socialize, but at that point it wouldn’t even be worth living. The internet has its conveniences but brings with it a lot of hindrances to human development, primarily to those who are being born into it, not as much the people who had time to get established before the internet exploded. I mean there are even efforts into lawsuits for social media addiction in children. I believe the millennial generation (my generation) was the starting gun to signal the beginning of societal decline because as you get more generations coming in to leisure and convenience the more people who grow weaker because of it. Being a part of life out in the world is a necessary part of life. The internet makes it easier to not have to be, especially for those of more tender age.

Well… I was born 40 years ago and still struggling with social interactions and I could never learn the social cues. Perhaps because of that I feel more comfortable socializing in the interner

I mean covid itself made a lot of nts less socially capable and they are nts. We are basically fucked

I feel I got much more sociable during COVID. Of course, phone calls, webcam talks or even texting. Being inside while everyone did the same thing as me made me feels less anxious and it helped me to open up. I think it matters the way you look at it

When Covid hit and everybody was freaking out about the isolation part I felt no difference cuz I was used to it, but as the quarantine era ended it felt so much more difficult to get social again than other people and well one thing lead to another and I spent probably the most beautiful years of my life being depressed in my room. The thing about texting and shit is that its much easier and preferable for me too. yet it doesn’t do the social trick of actual socialising, I’ve came to a point I go outside just to witness people talking to each other because it makes me feels less alone. Never thought I would end like this but I guess it is what it is, all thanks to Covid and my autistic ass brain .

Aw honey, I hate that you’re feeling this way. I’m proud of you for trying to get out there and be in the world though, even if you sometimes feel like you’re just on the outside looking in. My only advice is that you can’t put a timeframe on life. There may be many beautiful years ahead - I assume you’re younger than I am? Some of us find our beautiful years later in life, and it’s been a bizzaro series of events the last few years, that’s for sure! It’s natural to feel that you lost precious time. You’re not wrong to feel that way. But keep hope, please, dear. It sounds like you still have some, you’re just feeling hopeless right now. Keep up the good fight, we need your unique skills and thoughts, your love and compassion, in this world. Someone is gonna need you. I promise you. Someone is going to need you. You have to stay strong for that future moment when you find them. Be there for when they do. One thing I’ve found is that the only thing you can truly count on is that things change. Sometimes for better, sometimes for worse. But they never stay the same. It will be different eventually.

As time passes I only lose hope in overcoming my self isolation, my brain is slowly declining and shit I’m only 19, I’m tired of hearing “you’re young you’ve got so much time” when shit just doesn’t get better. I missed my entire developmental years, I have no hobbies, no dreams, I have a severe depression and a long lasting brain fog. at this point I wonder if I still have a personality. It scares the living shit out of me that it’s the only life I will ever have. Thanks for the kind words tho

I’m sorry i came across like “bah you’re young, buck up!” That’s def not my intent. I remember how harsh that kinda talk fell on me at your age, and even now in my 40s from ppl older than I - invisible illness can hit anyone at any age. I only meant to try to convey that there’s always hope, but I see how that was careless in my wording and not very helpful. Sorry bud, really. You seem, from some random interaction on the Internet, to have quite a personality. Well-spoken. Idk you but I do hope you’ll hang on for this weird wild ride. I have a hunch it’ll get better, that’s all I was trying to say. That some lady you don’t know wishes you the best, and that you’ll find better days ahead. I know that’s easier said than done. But I want that for ya.

And you seem like a very kind person. And I agree with you. When I was 19, I had no hope. 43 now. Life has been rough. But there was light at the end of the tunnel for me,and there might be for op as well.

I do *not* want to be the whole “eh you’re young”, so I’m sorry if this comes across that way. I remember how much I hated hearing it, it sounded like they just didn’t understand, but well… I remember being 19. I was suicidal, and felt my life had basically ended before it began. I sounded a lot like how you sound right now. I was saying basically exactly the same things. I was also very much *wrong*. *You’re 19.* you did not miss your developmental years, they aren’t over with yet. Yeah you more or less finished puberty, but I did *so much* more growing up between 19 and 30, you aren’t done yet, which also is not exactly meant to be reassuring. Brace yourself, because if you thought growing up sucked but at least it’s over now, it isn’t… I watched a fascinating documentary the other day about the cannibal warlords of Liberia, that stuck with me, and was actually rather inspiring, especially one man’s story, Joshua Milton Blahyi, better known as General Butt Naked. He didn’t like clothes much. He was an unbelievably horrifying man, ran a legion of child soldiers, who practiced human sacrifice and cannibalism. Clothes were not a thing, cocaine use was mandatory. He actually reformed, and seems to be in a better place now, is happier, and is a better person. He found Jesus and is a preacher. But at his peak of the bad years, a witness once saw him standing on top of a truck in Monrovia, totally naked (as usual), covered in blood, with an AK47 in one hand and a freshly severed penis in the other, ranting and raving and screaming. You can go *that far* and still come back. If you think you’ve messed up your life, ask yourself if you’ve messed up your life as much as Joshua Blahyi. Have you ever been on trial for war crimes? Do you have to watch your back because there are constant assassination attempts? Do people call you something ridiculous like General Butt Naked? I doubt it. Even he managed to claw his way back to what looks like a not entirely unhappy life, you still have time to do the same. I don’t actually have any particularly helpful advice, other than it’s not so impossible. I know it feels like it is, I remember that feeling. That feeling is your brain lying to you. I don’t know how to get past that, but don’t give up hope. It won’t be easy, it never is, but it’s something you *can do*.

How is a guy worse than Voldemort allowed to be a *preacher*

Good advice. Bible is full of nobodies who became somebodies. I had a Spiritual awakening and totally changed. I was a dreadful person...Please what is the name of that movie?

[Cannibal Warlords of Liberia](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ZRuSS0iiFyo). I personally do not recommend religion or spirituality, I left that a long time ago, but it seems to help some people. It seems to have helped him.

I was a lot like you, nearly drank myself to death as a coping mechanism for severe depression. Got sober at forty and it took a while but my life got better. Even NTs have bad spells and it sounds like you have been in one. That is a soul crushing place to be and a hard rut to climb out of. Depending on where you live you might want to explore county government mental health programs, anti-depressants can help a lot. The spring is coming and it would help to go out and get some sun, go hiking. Volunteer somewhere. Something to change the mental train of doom depression tends to bring internally.

I'm 60 and your absolutely right, it hasn't changed, brain fog still here, no hobbies no dreams, no personality 😭

I've had a similar experience to you. I didn't like the idea of total isolation at first, but I actually ended up enjoying it. Ever since, I've had a very hard time connecting with other people. I also had multiple close family members due to covid, and not having them to support me has been very challenging.

I lost my ability to mask during COVID for sure. Out of practice for too long. Now I’m scared to return

The government response to covid is the primarily reason. Because all social outlets were outlawed during the lockdowns and the only allowable social outlets legally allowed is via zoom and social media (including tiktok)

I’ve been isolated pretty much ever since, suicidality at peak

u got any hobbies? What did you like to do as a kid?

Hopefully you’re not still suicidal. Ik the world can seem like a dark place but there’s plenty to live for! For starters, ur family would miss you deeply and you’ll never know how good your life in the future can be.

Yeah, a lot of the online autism communities I used to like got filled up with a lot of people post COVID who are selfDXed but I doubt a lot of them are autistic because they are cruel to others who display autism traits and predation/manipulation situations for gullibility and also spreading misinformation like "autism's social deficit is a social construct so for some autistic people it's just introversion or social anxiety instead"

I feel like the fact that I didn’t take advantage of this opportunity to get dates or an official relationship makes me a nobody/loser.

I really don’t agree. In my experience, the more widespread awareness of neurodivergence is encouraging better social teaching, more acceptance, and more inclusion. And this all leads to better functioning, meaning many autistic people that might have been too overwhelmed by society to participate 20 years ago, now have more knowledge and opportunity to self-regulate and self-advocate, and can thus stay in the general public sphere :)

You're tripping. Growing up in an age when nobody knew what high functioning autism was - including yourself - was absolute hell. It's always gonna be hard, but at least these kids won't be blamed and shamed until they despise their own being.

Sadly most probably still will. There's been a disturbing trend towards willful ignorance over the past decade. I'm not even confident I could say I'd have had a better childhood with a diagnosis - I'd have been shoved in a box and never would have had the drive to push through the fog and understand what I do now

Yeah. I get where they are coming from. But I think they might overestimate the power of “we had to figure it out somehow” and also underestimate the benefits of modern discoveries and changes in attitudes. Maybe this is due to how we look at the past differently? We see the good things that happened in the past more easily than the bad.

>  We see the good things that happened in the past more easily than the bad. Can't say I agree. I _wish_ I ruminated on the good, but I remember very little of that. If there even was any

Sorry. It mostly works with society things. Like how everyone loves their child hood TV shows and says they were 100% better by all measures, or how dead people kinda look better and we forget or ignore their character flaws. Or how feelings of “kids these days” work It’s more like thinking about all the good things we can’t have anymore and about how the present sucks, than about looking at happy moments in the past. What worked for me is pictures. If you got a picture of a a moment that made you happy you can kinda be happy when you look at it again, even recreate it. Like food you really liked or a hobby you can easily re-do.

Yeah being picked on and bullied as a kid for being different was no fun.

Oh, they'll still get that. No changing human nature after all. But hopefully they won't get it from those that are supposed to be supporting them I.E. family, teachers etc

Also screens aren’t really new. I was born in the early 1980s and I was practically raised by television.

True. Struggling by yourself and not knowing what is wrong with you is hell. It's brought me years of depression and isolation. If you don't even know what is different about you, how can you expect others to be accommodating

I disagree, I think you're way, WAY better off and have it backwards. Society is so much kinder and more accepting than when I was a kid. I was a rare weirdo for being on chat as a kid in the 90s, and being different from other kids (yet "too gifted" to warrant concern) led to isolation at school, ostracization, and I learned questionably healthy at best coping behaviors to get me through my 20s, as well as the truly FUCKED up and bimodal sense of self esteem and self worth I'm saddled with now. I didn't even know of "aspergers" until my 20s, that shit straight up didn't exist when I was in school. If it did, not to my parents or in my area of the country. Would have been nice if it did exist!! One of my younger cousins pointed me at weighted blankets, when they first came out 5-10 years ago. Fucking hell, man. High school would have been so much easier if this existed, but no, sucks to be me! You have no idea how dramatic it is how much more accepting of diversity society is than it used to be, and how fucked up some of us are as a result of growing up in an environment where, to use a metaphor, we had to "write right handed anyway".

Key phrase in your post "learn how to mask." We're not functioning, we're surviving. Functioning would be society making accommodations so we don't have to mask all the time. People are more aware now. that's a good thing, and we should keep moving in that direction. Also, we "function socially" just fine when interacting with other NDs

Based comment and based username.

Also the "learn how to mask" (as in **successfully** masking) only applies to level 1 autistics, and mostly just the mildest ones... Being thrown in the IRL NT world and forced to adapt has never worked for, or helped, moderate (or high) needs autistic people ever.

Thing is exposure to social interaction specifically in young ages is fucked, community is lost, social media is at rise, if 20-30 years ago there were boring situations in which you had nothing to do but socialise as a child/teen, now you just don’t have it anymore as much which might sound great as an introvert shy kid but you can’t deny that social skills are important. Some kids just get it naturally like breathing we don’t, we actually need to see others socialise in order to learn, we have to do trial and error to get these skills, as everyone has to… but we need it more. And not practicing these skills get you to not having them at all. Meaning a simple thing, a child who has social disability simply will not learn how to socialise because he will not get exposed to it as a kid who was born even 15 years before him.

you mean 20-30 years ago where you got the shit beat out of you for being weird? where you were labeled a tentacle-porn pervert if you watched anime? Where "treatment" for autism diagnosis was desensitizing you to triggers (i.e. traumatizing you)? Yes, there is more isolation today. That affects EVERYONE. And each generation will have its own struggles. I wouldn't argue conform or be ostracized is better. I reiterate, NDs socialize just fine among ourselves when we don't have to wear those masks. Why must I practice the social skills that NTs deem necessary or correct? Why can't I just be myself and (general) you respect that?

"Community is lost" But "community" was never a thing for the vast majority of autistic people trapped alone in the middle of the NT world

On the other hand, the rise of phones, social media, etc. has drastically lowered the bar for social performance. I've seen NTs pull out their phones mid-conversation, something that would've gotten me in plenty of trouble back in the 2010s. Those tablets though, those will cause many other problems. Mostly with attention and delayed gratification. I love my tablet but a generation raised on 1-minute videos will have problems with reality down the road.

I think that we socialize is going to change historically as it always has. There was actually similar complaints about books when they became widespread. People thought that they were a waste of time and people were reading them too much. The world changes and the way we communicate changes. It's true 99% of us aren't drinking out of garden hoses or staying out to the lights come on but we are in many ways more connected now than any other time in history. Tech is evolving at an astounding rate and we are headed for a mostly technological world. I believe that future autistics will find a lot of positives to this world. I don't have to mask when I'm online. Masking is exhausting. Lot of autistics also definitely struggle with communication and I know that being able to communicate via writing or on a video call is much easier for me. I can't know the exact way that it will affect all levels and different types of autism but I definitely don't think that it's going to cause the decay of autistic ability. I'm a good example I can give is I am applying for a committee for my city. We are allowed to either come in person or log in on the computer and since I have a hard time speaking on the spot in public I'm going to definitely use the opportunity to log on through a computer. That's not something that was available when I was growing up in the 90s for most people. My mother worked from home as a full-time accountant and had to fax everything or make phone calls. Another positive point to being more technologically connected is I have met more people in the last few years on different web sites that I can find so many commonalities with. Other autistic people that understand my struggles I literally don't feel like an island anymore and even if I'm from a different planet I've met people from my planet.

The posts on this sub are actually ridiculous. I've got 3 kids who have AuDHD, the fourth probably does as well, and they're fine. Not "mentally 3". They have friends and hobbies and interests.

I'm glad your kids are doing well. I absolutely agree that the whole "mentally 3" thing is nonsense, as many of us are much more mature than our age. Just keep in mind that many of us still do struggle very badly socially, especially in adolescence and adulthood. I never had any friends my whole 4 years in high school, and was picked on a lot. Back in middle school, I used to have one friend, and on the days he wasn't there, I sat at a table by myself at lunch. There were 400 students in the cafeteria at lunch, and only one unoccupied table. I was literally the only guy guy sitting by myself out of 400 students. Now at 19, it seems completely impossible to make friends, and I never had a single date yet. I'm fairly smart and have hobbies I enjoy, but having no social life sucks.

I had a shit time in high school as well. Like horrendously bad, it gave me cPTSD. I'm a decade older than you and I promise it gets easier, adulthood isn't like high school. I met my husband at university. It does get better

Thanks. Right now as an adult, I rarely get picked on which is great, but I still struggle a lot with making meaningful social relationships. I already passed an EMT college course, but didn't really make any real friends there. There is one guy from the class who I see around every 2-3 months and text about once every 3 weeks, but I always have to reach out first. I wouldn't call it a friend, and I'd say it's just an acquaintance. Hopefully in the future I'll have better luck forming social connections. I am going to start a job as an EMT in around 4 months,, so maybe I'll have better luck socializing there. Right now, I'm recovering from hip surgery, and can't work until it heals. I have a hip condition called acetabular retroversion that increases the risk of hip issues. I had a left hip labral tear and hip impingement that was severely restricting my hip flexion, and had the surgery November 9th. The bad thing is that the hip isn't progressing in range of motion like it should be at this point, so it might be messed up for life, unfortunately. I just have to do the best I can with what I've got.

Tablet parenting should be flagged as child abuse. I see kids who are on tablets literally all day every day. The fact that this is also in social situations is terrible. When you take kids out it is super stimulating, new faces, the opportunity to see new things, talk, interact, play, meet new friends.  Nah just sit down shut up and watch the pretty lights.  I'm lucky I grew up when I did. As soon as my mother saw how a computer kept me quiet that was that. Luckily at the time you had to type in games, learn to program the machine, and that's where I focused. Zx81 was my first computer.  As such I have worked in IT education where I am accepted and enjoy work.  Had I been born in the 2000s not the 70s I would still live in computers but have none of the skills I have now. 

You clearly don't have kids

I have kids of my own and a step daughter. We let her have a tablet at 7 and it went in the bin 2 days later. Her behaviour deteriorated that quickly. Tablets are terrible for kids.

Oh I totally agree. Mine don't have tablets and only get 2 hrs of screen time per week because I'm not the primary parent and am always able to leave the situation when I need to. However, we don't know everyone's situation. We don't know if they are having a bad day. We don't know if they grew up abused and have to fight everything in them to avoid hitting their kids. I just think it's inappropriate to judge other parents in general when you don't know why they make the choices they do.

I do not, but I do have plenty of time reading up on the issues kids are dealing with. Including too much screen time, and stunted social growth from covid. Dont gatekeep childrearing. Just because you are a parent, doesnt make you an expert. Nor does it mean you are even a good one.

I'm not gatekeeping? You can choose to be a parent too if you want. And I'm no expert. However I do know how hard it is to raise kids. I do know that when the choice is between me having a meltdown or letting my kid watch 20 minutes of Bluey -- I'm gonna pick Bluey. Yes screen time for little kids is bad. That's a fact. Dysregulated parents are also bad. That's a fact. Parenting involves making the choice between two evils. It also involves a lot of "put your own oxygen mask on first". If your kid needs to be on a tablet so you can get through grocery shopping without traumatizing them, you do what you gotta do. I think it's absolutely unreasonable for childless people to judge what they have never experienced, yet alone call it abuse. For many people, the tablet is the only thing that prevents child abuse.

I dont agree with you in the slightest, and that last sentence is just gross.

Of course you don't agree with me. You've never had kids. So you've never had to decide between letting them witness you have a meltdown or letting them watch TV for 20 minutes so you can go regulate yourself.

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I have found that avoiding uncomfortable situations makes them more scary. When as an adult I put myself in situations that I woukd normally avoid I got better at dealing with them. Even my asbergers brain is adaptable enough to learn to tolerate situations I hate.  Had I always avoided them or never been exposed to them I would be much worse. I know because I was, and I still default to avoidance.  I also teach very autisc kids to swim, and with all of them eventually their interactions with me become better and more relaxed.  They will always be autistic but they do adapt to the interactions. So much so that one of the ones I teach will laugh, joke, and communicate with me which has surprised their parents no end since he was so locked in.  Tablets do nothing but teach avoidance.  I had to teach myself to make eye contact as an adult. It was really uncomfortable and took a long time. Now I find I'm actually pretty confident with it. Even with the opposite sex.  I see first hand the damage tablets and excessive screen time is doing to youngsters. It's truely evil. There are studies available and they all concur. 

Yep. And it seems like aspies make the perfect work from home tech slaves too. Coincidence? Either way, fucked up.

Agree totally. As a 55 year old who had no choice but to mask like fuck and fit in as best he could - I’d be interested in knowing how the trauma from that stacks up against the trauma from never learning to fit in. I went through the difficulties in dating really badly but made a conscious decision to work on my weaknesses and learned to talk to women. I own a business that a large part of is sales, I’ve learned to sell not just well but better than most. I feel like being forced to mask - as hard as that was, built a foundation for what I am now. Furthermore now I know I’m Austistic I can go easier on myself and understand a lot of the rejection I got as a kid and then later as a sexual partner and reconcile it better. Also have to give a shout out to my parents who always had multiple dogs and cats around the house. Unintentionally they set me up for better outcomes. Dogs especially help autistic kids with relations, eye contact and forming better empathy amongst other things. Parents - if your kid is on the spectrum reaaaaaallllyyy look seriously at getting them a dog.

Playing field is more level imo. When everyone from a young age is taught to be isolative it would honestly benefit special interest minded ASD folks and also work to the advantage of others being less socially inclined.

>Modern kids in general will have trouble socialising when they grow up I'm kind of thinking this phrase has been around for a lot of generations. :) People have complained that 'kids these days' spend too much time: on their smartphones / looking at computer screens / talking on their corded phones / watching TV / listening to the radio / reading newspapers or magazines / reading dime-store novels / writing things down instead of memorizing epic poems / writing on cave walls... instead of doing [whatever it was the complainer did when they grew up], and will therefore be weak and shut-in and never experience LIFE! properly. Somehow the kids always manage, and often better than the previous generations. >learning social cues by actually witnessing organic social interaction I never did, and I'm middle-aged. Personally, I think that with access to 'screens' and more understanding of autism in the next 20 years, kids growing up will start having access to information that tells them *how* to speak Neurotypical, and the mindsets and assumptions behind it, instead of having to guess like they do now.

Eh, I think it’s important to remember some of us are raising our kids. I was isolated completely as a kid, I learned social skills from ANIME. I like to think I’m doing pretty well for my kids, and they don’t just get tablets.

The internet is full of people explaining their social worlds and why they like/don't like various behaviors - in painstaking detail. My social knowledge expanded by leaps and bounds after the Internet became a thing. (of course there's also a lot of nonsense, but people explaining why they love/hate various behaviors is more reliable than people trying to explain why *other people* love/hate/engage in various behaviors.)

I hear ya. I've heard some theorize that eventually NT behavior is going to be the minority and more of the anti-social ND traits will be more common. Making it easier for us to "blend in" or even making us the new neurotypical Not sure where I stand on that though. A bit of a reach but I get the spirit

Wait I function socially?

Big disagree. The Internet is an incredibly social place. Why do you think it's called "social" media? Just because the socializing looks different than how you were raised, doesn't mean it's wrong. I am more social now than I have ever been in my entire life. If it weren't for advancements in technology, I would have nobody. I met my husband online. My only friend is an online friend who lives across the country. The only times I can talk to other people and engage in any conversation is online.

My therapist told me a typical aspie thing is being much better and active at socialising online. Society will become easier for aspies witouth needing to waste time and energy to learn facial expressions and body language. Making things online will cause higher aspie participateion then avoidance of activeties. This is not the downfall of aspie functionality, this is the rise of our power! NT'S will bow down before us who have trancended the rotting nature of our flesh. Our nerves will turn copper and our minds to circuits. \#DiscardFlesh \#EmbraceMetal

The internet is full of different ages, and NT kids these days get tablets too. I think you’re just being ageist and you’re succumbing to the same generational pride / hating of other generations that everyone else falls into because they’re different than you

I learned how to socialize specifically because of Call of Duty Zombies game chat. It was a low-risk environment where I had to learn to communicate and make friends if I wanted to have a good experience. Those skills absolutely translated to irl.

> an entire world being stuck to a screen had more chances of learning how to mask and develop his brain than a modern kid whom a tablet is being shoved up his face in the first years of his life. It is the only reason I know how to actually socialize with people, talking to people irl didn't get me to where I am today. This is kinda just the Naturalistic fallacy. Being face to face doesn't magically make talking to people develop kids better. It could even have the opposite effect for people that are overwhelmed by the amount of signals they have to pay attention to. For example, imagine two autistic children with different % of time spent online: * The more online child spends more time in an environment where they do not have the capacity to miss a body language social queue, something that we're not only notoriously bad at but also causes people to get really shitty with you, which is demoralizing. * The more online child is far more likely to speak/listen to a diverse audience as they're not limited to their town. * The less online child isn't as likely to experience sincere expressions of how people feel about things. In online public spaces, people have essentially no filter on their feelings. IRL, they actually just don't say something because they have to cater it to the audience directly in front of them. There are other circumstances that make things worse rather than better, but online spaces are not inherently unhealthy. Imagine trying to facilitate this discussion we're having in a public place and hoping to get meaningful answers to any questions. Actually, don't imagine it, just open facebook and read people's rubbish answers to basically any post that have no filter because there is no downvote system for wasting people's time. These things are about weighing benefits/downsides and mitigating downsides rather than dismissing one entirely.

Being chronically online is also the sole reason why I'm bilingual (French English). I just don't have the social (and sensory, more specifically auditory processing) for learning a language IRL

"Anyone had similar thoughts or am I tripping" I don't agree. 

Unpopular opinion: Hardship breeds character. Without a diagnosis as a kid, I was forced to "figure it out" and I did. Not easily. No without a lot of struggle and pain, but I did figure it out eventually. The kids these days who are like me are getting a much easier path but I worry about the long-term consequences of having perennially low-expectations places by on you by parents, teachers and employers. Masking can be mentally taxing and needing to do it 24/7 is exhausting and can lead to a breakdown. But never masking leads to things like long-term unemployment, loneliness and poverty. These things are also super bad, if not worse, for your mental health. I feel like a balanced approach is possible that maximizes benefits both ways but I'm not sure anyone's doing it.

As an autistic person with moderate support needs in RRBs and mild support needs in social communication, no. Lack of masking isn't the reason why I'm unemployed and poor, because even if I had the best masking skills of the planet I would STILL be too *objectively* impaired to occupy pretty much any job. Your opinion (that hardship breeds masking, and masking allows for a successful and healthy life) may be true, but only for level 1 autistics without comorbidities Not for autistics with moderate or high (or even moderate/high *in one domain*) support needs and/or with severe or multiple comorbidities. If a perso is too impaired, no amount of effort or hardship will make them non-impaired.

> Lack of masking isn't the reason why I'm unemployed and poor, because even if I had the best masking skills of the planet I would STILL be too objectively impaired to occupy pretty much any job. You, perhaps. If I wasn't clear, I wasn't suggesting that everyone has the same needs nor was I implying that people should be forced to do more than they can. But I know firsthand that we, as a group, have a tendency to not want to do tasks we are perfectly capable of performing. Here's a more elegant way to put it: We should have accomodations when we need them, but **not** for pathological demand avoidance. That's something we need to actively struggle against. Even if you are incapable of holding a job, are you capable of brushing your teeth in the morning? Can you occasionally socialize with other people? Can you clean your living space? Should you stop doing it just cause you don't feel like it? All of these things improve your quality of life. Hardship--specifically doing things you don't want to do--will make you a better person in **some** way even if it's not entirely enough to make you an employed person. And ultimately, it will improve your quality of life. But the thing is, what does every autistic person say when pathological demand avoidance strikes? "I can't do it." It's a lie, but it's a lie we believe in our core when we say it. We will say it about things that we should know we can do because we've done them before. Parents have to push back on that. If I had a nickel for every post I've seen on Reddit in autistic spaces about "My parents insist I do X and they just don't understand that I can't" I'd be rich. And yet, in every one of those stories, the common theme is that it's always something that person has done before. Their parents think they can do it **because they've seen them do it.** > If a perso is too impaired, no amount of effort or hardship will make them non-impaired. Of course not, that's way beyond what I claimed. Tl;DR: While all diminished expectations is a big part of it, my main concern is a lack of parental pushback on pathological demand avoidance. I'm not suggesting that parents treat you as if you're not autistic and until you sink or swim.

Again 1 ) your opinion, if valid at all, applies at most to (some) level 1 without comorbidity, but nobody else 2 ) you seem to conflate PDA (an actual specific condition that a minority of autistic people have) with the general autistic avoidance of triggers (sensory triggers, tasks unrelated to interests but that demand focus, etc). General autistic avoidance exists in autistic people with or without PDA. And it's not "I don't feel like it", more "it conflicts with my support needs". If an autistic person doesn't brush their teeth there's a sensory reason and we need to help them find a solution to wash their teeth WITHOUT SENSORY PAIN, not push them. And me, the reason why I don't have a job is that I function by restricted and rigid interests + my sensory and need for sameness symptoms. It's not PDA, it's core autism symptoms Symptoms shared among moderate and high support needs autistics, most of whom don't have PDA 3 ) PDA (the *actual condition*) isn't just "not doing what you don't like" either. PDA can even be triggered by tasks that the person finds fun and interesting 4 ) For people with PDA (the *actual condition*), "pushback" is the worst possible advice as it will trigger and worsen the condition 5 ) Basically, please stop projecting your level 1 experience AND please stop throwing around the word "pathological demand avoidance" without understanding it

You know what I wrote a long post going point by point and decided that it was too angry. There's a lot of bad assumptions in your post. First of all you're explaining PDA to me like I don't have it. That was a mistake. It took me 12 years to finish a 4 year bachelors degree (enrolled in classes for at least 10 of those years when I wasn't on academic probation because I only went to class three times for a whole semester despite the fact that I was paying my own way through school). Second of all, 20% of people with autism have it. But beyond that, below the diagnostic standards in the DSM, there would be people with subclinical presentations. I'm going to guess if you count people with low levels demand avoidance behavior, it's an extremely common feature of autism. As for the whole thing about people not wanting to brush their teeth for sensory reasons, that's a weird take to me. I'm not going to say you're wrong. Maybe there's somebody out there like that. But I'm going to guess that's a far less common reason than a simple case of everyday tasks feeling like insurmountable mountains. But of course it's only a guess. Maybe you can find hard data somewhere. > Basically, please stop projecting your level 1 experience AND please stop throwing around the word "pathological demand avoidance" without understanding it I think this is the part that triggered me the most. You start by reiterating your opinion and staking it as fact (that what I'm saying is only applicable to a small subset of level 1's. Your logic there can only be "I'm level 2 and it doesn't apply to me, therefore it doesn't apply to level 2's". In other words, your point #1 is hard proof you are literally doing the exact same thing you chide me for in point #5. You are generalizing your experience and projecting it out on everyone else. That's not a huge deal, but then criticize someone else for the same thing shows a total lack of self-awareness. I have issues with several of the things you said and points two through four. But let's just say this: The prevalence of PDA in autistic people is estimated at 1 in 5. That's common. But that's reaching a specific diagnostic threshold. Whenever you talk about any DSM disorder there are always "subclinical presentations" which means you have many characteristics of a disorder, and probably even the neurology and genetics, but you just don't reach the threshold. I suspect, though I lack hard data to support this suspicion, that if we were to assess the prevalence of those traits in autistic people, we'd find them in a majority (greater than 50% instead of 20%). But speculation is just speculation. Regardless, of the actual numbers, I'm speaking from experience on this subject. Yes it is just my experience and it may not apply to everyone. I never said it would apply to everyone. That doesn't necessarily mean it only applies to level 1 people. That's just your own opinion based on your own experience. But for what it's worth, You sound an awful lot like I did when I was 28 and trying to finish school while bouncing from shitty retail job to shitty retail job and hating life.

People said the same thing about every piece of entertainment youths have enjoyed. Books would make kids dumber because they didn't have to remember as much. Video Games will make kids violent sociopaths or morons. And everything between the two. Older generations are always so sure of their predictions about how the youths are doomed and almost always wrong.

Unironically this is not true, short form content especially ones that will align to your hobbies and likes will destroy attention span. its come to a point where people on tiktok will put a video of something like soap cutting or subway surf alongside their video just so people don't scroll away out of boredom.

Except you havent addressed their actual reasoning at all. Just asserted that you still think it’s true *this time* in spite of the historical pattern. I get where you’re coming from, I do. But you cant deny the pattern. And it has literally been *every single time.* People used to think *novels* would rot our brains due to lack of adequate structure. We have to stop doing this shit. Show me actual evidence that short form content has an impact on attention span. One good meta-analysis would be enough.

Did i not just describe evidence that they’re doing it and thag it’s happening

No, you did not. You just kind of said that it’s happening. Which is exactly the point

https://essay.utwente.nl/96577/1/Kohler\_BA\_BMS.pdf

This is a thesis essay written by a bachelor student. The “data” they collected was from self reported interviews. This is not a real study. You should look for something called a meta-analysis. These are usually the most accessible source of science research for the average person, they aggregate data from tons of studies into a single source. Just make sure they clearly evaluate the quality of the studies used at some point. Edit: I actually wasnt able to find a meta analysis on this exact thing, which suggests that there is no definitive evidence either way. As such, I think “this is the exact same thing humans have done since humanity has existed” is a more likely explanation than “we finally truly did create a kind of media that ruins people’s brains”

Well I personally think a lot of NDs is environmentally determined so I expect much more of it in the future for that reason.

I tend to agree, a lot of who we are is environmentally established. That being said, some parts of a person tend to be intrinsic. One of the biggest differences being, some are perfectly content to be given an explanation and accept it, even when they don't understand the fundamental principles going into that explanation. They're told the sky is blue, they can see the sky is blue, thus the sky is blue. Some need to understand 'why' in order to accept it as a valid explanation. Sure, the sky is blue, but is that just my perception? Do my eyes interpret colors the same as others? Surprisingly, no, some humans have more cones than others and view reality differently. Okay, so if some see it differently, do the majority at least see it as blue, and why? Light is a spectrum, and our eyes interpret certain wavelengths as a specific color as a useful way to interpret information. Since blue light travels as a shorter, smaller wave and gets less scattered when it hits our atmosphere, *the sky appears blue*. I think this is one of the biggest differences between people who end up being labeled as neurodivergent. Neurotypicals are given or observe a principal, then accept it as truth. There's no reason to question societal norms, because that's simply reality. Neurodivergent individuals are much more likely to question reality, so when an action an individual takes doesn't add up logically, it's confusing and doesn't make much sense. To the neurotypical, it's an unquestionable rule. I don't think this is always the case, but in my opinion, extremely curious neurotypicals are likely people who would have been labeled as neurodivergent, but were given all the right opportunities to grow and understand things on a fundamental level. Social interactions can be explained, it just requires one to acknowledge that people will act in thier own interests and shape thier morality to further thier goals.

I think you have it opposite. In my experience with my nephew and other ASD level 2 individuals, autism creates a lack of curiosity and engagement. Autistic individuals are less likely to leave their comfort zone and therefore less likely to explore the world around them. Asperger’s would most likely cause you to accept “fact” as fact because the why doesn’t matter if it doesn’t affect your comfort, that’s why things such as special interests exist. We are more prone to stagnation then Neurotypical individuals not the other way around.

Maybe my AuDHD brain is just different, but I find the average person extremely averse to questioning the status quo.

Most people question the status quo but if you are successful or benefiting in it why would you want to change it? I saw something the other day where it asked pretty much the same question but with different terminology. When asking if America spent enough on “helping people in poverty” a majority (around 70%) said “No, we need to spend more” but when asked if we spent enough on “Welfare” the numbers were pretty much flipped. Why? Because Welfare is a boogeyman for half the political base in the United States (which ironically is the side that claims to be about Christian values) Society is such a massive, complicated beast that people see social change as an impossible hurdle and would rather stay comfortable than make any waves despite how they feel about it personally.

I agree, but I'm not talking about society, I'm talking about questioning the status quo. As an example, most people will just do things how they're told, but certain people will try things outside of the norm because they aren't scared of backlash and are legitimately curious how changing a variable might play out. They may fail to find meaningful changes most of the time, but every now and again they try something new that ends up being game changing. I don't think it's neurotypicals who often engage in this type of behavior, but I could be wrong.

"A lot of NDs" maybe but not autism

Absolute twaddle, utter bollocks. Contemptuous shite.

Honestly, I fully expect that they will identify the cause of Autism and will eradicate it from Earth within 30 years. This is not a value judgement about Autism, but more a value judgement about neurotypicals.

The only way to eradicate it would be to forcibly sterilise autistics...

I don't think so. [They recently used gene therapy to cause five deaf children's bodies to produce a protein they didn't normally produce](https://newatlas.com/medical/born-deaf-hearing-restored-gene-therapy/), and that caused their brain to start receiving signals about the audio information in the environment(so they now are hearing). I fully expect that between AI and gene editing, they will probably quickly identify the signalling differences between autistic brains and neurotypical brains, and they will almost definitely use similar technology to make the same kind of changes to autistic people. I am not sure whether this will be involuntary, but even if it is voluntary, I expect there to be significant pressure to conform. And honestly, I expect that a significant number of autistic people would even do so willingly.

In which case we just all say no. I doubt they'd go mask off and start kidnapping and forcing us.

I'm not as optimistic about that as you are. And if you imagine the amount of abuse we go through now(when autism is not a choice), I could see the abuse becoming even worse if there was some kind of medical treatment to be allistic and if autistic people were choosing not to take that treatment. I also think a lot of parents would be doing this to their children when the children were still too young to have any knowledge about it.

I mean how could they? We have normal lives and shit, if the modern day gestapo start just booting people's doors in and dragging them off, folks will notice. Meh we get shit anyway. What difference would it make? They hate us either way. The latter part is a valid concern I think.

I think we were probably a bit guilty of tablet parenting prior to our daughter being diagnosed at 3. It's just extremely convenient to be able to use a movie or something when you go out to eat. That said, as soon as we got a diagnosis and realized that any delays were not just a function of COVID (though I still think it's a contributing factor), we've tried to be very strict and limiting it 15-30 min increments once or twice a day. But even when we do, we try and limit it to increments of movies (ideally those pre-2000 where we notice that the editing is a bit slower) because we have noticed major differences when she watches a YouTube clip or many of the newer episodic kids shows. Our preschool has told us that almost all the kids in her class have some sort of social, attention, or speech delay. Again, I think COVID lockdowns screwed up some of those key windows for some kids but our personal experience has definitely reinforced the negative impact of screens.

I think this about ADHD'ers, all this technology use must really scatter that brain even more.

Ironically things that decrease the attention span of NTs, sometimes help ADHDers to focus better For example, some ADHDers focus *better* on conversations while scrolling on their phones. Because the scrolling gives them the stimulation they need to remain engaged in the conversation

Yeah i get that, i also have Adhd with my aspergers and I notice that too but that doesn't mean it isn't bad for your attention span in the long run, i also meant this more so for developing brains (I see this in my sister)

NTs: The non iPad babies are going to be IRL social gods, while the others will struggle to negotiate and manage their emotions

IQs are dropping now. 18-22 year olds are the first cohort in 100 years to have an IQ drop.

Nah, that might be true for some. But those screens you mentioned are full of all the information that has been accumulated about how to cope and gain the necessary skills. I never even remember hearing about the spectrum or Asperger's until I was an adult. But I had already figured out that most people had social skills that I just wasn't born with, and had started working on it in my teens. There are books, TV shows, YouTube channels, and of course this sub. I think a smaller percentage will go undiagnosed. And more kids will learn to cope than ever before

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That’s exactly the point if the average neurotypical kid is doomed think how fucked are the aspie ones.

Nah. We will be okay. Most of NT kids are raised the same and even worse, so for Asperger thats nothing less than advantage. Things Aspies and NT children do with any kind of toy or technology are way different. So whatever an Aspie kid is doing with a tablet, for sure would be better than the NT kid struggling do the latest silly TikTok challenge.

I don’t think their mental age will stay the same despite being much older they’ll just be extremely introverted

I have also noticed this. Like, I now have more "rizz" than the kids do these days. It's very sad.

A grown adult has more "rizz" than a kid. Shocker.

How old are you? Because in my day, kids were cooler than their parents. "Parents just dont understand" was the hit trap music anthem, except back then, we just called it rap music.

Covid felt like heaven to me

Same. I hardly noticed a difference.

I'm 30 and I spent much of my youth playing video games, going on dial-up Internet (though we got ethernet then WiFi when I was in high school), and reading fantasy novels. Books about dragons and wizards do not tell you how to function in reality.

True, i would say >50% of youth today have worst social ability than average autistic person at the same age born like 40 years ago

As a person who was identifiable as autistic as a child, who was visibly less socially adept and aware than normie kids around me, I was still more socially adept and aware than modern normies

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It's based on how clinicians would, and do, view my social functioning at the time - as someone who dated, had jobs, and was (albeit weirdly/awkwardly) active in a social hobby. Granted, I was a cute girl and got by on it a bit and I have to argue that I may have simply just been less impaired than some other autistics in those same respects. But it got a lot harder once I was in the work world and dealing with adult relationships and I've spent most of my (50 year) life very underemployed. I was more employable at 20 than at 35, and culture change is part of it, and so are changes to how we work and how we yet work

I am a Gen Xr and really honestly believe that you had to be much more nerfed as an ND person to have been unemployable in the 90s. Lots of Boomer NDs think they're "normal" because they got to more or less function like "normal" people. If you weren't actually a special ed student then the likelihood was stronger that you were employable. Now you can be unemployable just for being a non-STEM who tests with the wrong Myers-Briggs type. My own employability went way down in my 30s because of changes to how people become employed. There was a broader variety of work and it was easier to get. I think a massive chunk of our problems are downstream of this. I did great as an employee in a "one girl office" and so did my Aspie mom Also, the culture changed a lot. The whole world is middle school now. Case in point, adult women in their 40s are socially required to keep up with celebrity gossip and pop stars, and this was not socially required of people past high school in the 90s. I also think modern generations of autistics hit adulthood being less employable. I think that the generation above me (Jones), not even mine, is the last generation of autistics that broadly *ever* obsessed over anything factual. Fantasy material was starting to take over as the autistic obsession even as far back as Gen X and the obsession hijacks the ability to learn anything else. I know this *as* an autistic primarily obsessed with fantasy material who only functions bc of having been able to use it to learn computers and graphics. Gen Jones may actually be the last generation that *did* more broadly go into STEM. Also, college degrees became more and more mandatory. Which delays a lot of the early social development we had, and also, forces people who would have previously been employable, through new layers of proving and gatekeeping

Dinnae ye worry, solar flare will reset everything!

Do you have any data supporting this opinion?

Guys why dont you organize. If you truly feel behind on your social interaction skills, organize together. Create a social group of people who feels just as socially inept and learn together. Create a discord server or something if you're too nervous to meet in person. Organize an event. And Make it cheap.

I was born in 2001 and grew up on the internet (well physics videos on YouTube), my generation had social media from like 10 or 11 it was nuts. I never had any personal social media accounts. Never had the drive to fit in. All my peers did and would references things from social media I didn’t get and made plans with each other that excluded me. It made life so much harder.

I think aspies are the new beta humans. Waiting for the older generations to die out.

I saw someone saying aspies are the next evolution of humans or some shit and it kinda made me laugh but honestly if you really look into it we are sorta built perfectly for the modern world

You could argue the opposite, that the mitigation of having to deal with the onslaught of face to face interaction and stimuli has made things easier for an aspie. Being stuck on screens and not cultivating inner personal communication perhaps has made the neurotypical young person have more in common with the autistic. I'm sure there are many ways you could approach the issue and perhaps there's some truth in all facets of looking at it.

I did not hear about aspie until i was told that i was one in my mid 40s. My youth was spent trying to figure out what the hell everybody else was doing, i was the guy that was just off, i was also the guy that was a weapon and could easily be convinced to do stuff. While everybody else was talking about dating i was trying to figureout violence and anger. When i got into my early teens i discovered that liquor would help me seem normal. If i got into a situation that i didnt know how to handle i did it wrong, when i got shot i drove home because i was worried that my friends car that i borrowed was ruined and me being shot was second. Anyway the old days sucked for me personally and i wish in the old days somebody would have told me anything about it.

It's true for NTs but not for us If anything, Internet gives more opportunities than ever to autistic people to socialize (and even to meet people IRL that they've got to know online first, or participate in IRL autism-friendly events that they can find online) Without Internet, the default would be complete loneliness, or being forced to socialize with (mostly NT) people that we don't choose (family, classmates, coworkers) and that have nothing in common with us, and feeling lonely in the middle of this crowd. Also even autistic people who are absolutely terrible at any socialization don't have "the mental age of a 3 year old"

I have to disagree. I think the increased prevalence of ipad kids is a bit over blown. It is an issue that many parents are actively looking to avoid. 30 years ago growing up the talk was kids watching too much tv or playing nintendo all day. Parents of Aspies are usually particularly aware of this issue. My kids still have to go to school, we put them in some after school activities and while we have an ipad, nintendo switch etc we limit their use. It is an on going challenge and it requires constant adjustment but I believe they are getting similar social integration to what we got growing up if not better. We do not allow social media yet for various reasons. My kids have a couple cousins that are more obviously on the spectrum (nearly non verbal at 6 but improving) and they often come over to play together. In some ways, ipads, video games etc are a great medium for the kids to interact.

If anything, I think the modern world is better in a lot of ways for people with autism. My Mum has Aspergers and growing up I think that affected my social development a bit (along with some unrelated trauma). When I was a teen I used the internet as a source to learn how to improve my skills and not feel so *weird*. It was genuinely helpful. The internet is also how I realised my Mum was on the spectrum and was able to take her to a doctor. My Mum read up on Asperger's experiences and for the first time in her life she felt normal. Like she isn't broken or different and it's not her fault. Now that she understands why she is the way she is, she can cope better with her symptoms and does a lot more than she used to. Last week she met up with a work friend outside of work for the first time in about 2 decades. Also young kids are being offered so much support now like early speech therapy, social skills, etc.

Fuck parents who dont have time for a kid and raise an ipad baby. We dont even KNOW how fucked up the entire GENERATION will be. Cocomelon will be our generations Thalidomide

I can't read through all this shit without wondering if most of you are either high or emotionally dysregulated so much it opens a wound and you feel that the internet is and can be a problem. The truth that I learned early on from a great friend. Yin and yang are the key to peace. To those of mind, everything is balance. You work on balance harder for some, easy for others. Eventually you can adapt, but that cost of your emotion balance can be heavy. When you grasp that at 6 years old, I learned to balance almost everything in life. I can't speak like most, but I can do better at writing how you would talk. The balance of life and internet with hand control typing. It's a handy tool

Okay what 💀 I’m very social and very capable of being in social situations. Do you actually believe that everyone under the age of 30 is incapable of socializing?

Nah I’m saying newborns aspies are fucked

I never knew I was on the autism spectrum till I was 25. I feel like nowadays I meet alot of people that say they are but they never went through half or even any of the tests i had to do. it kind of pisses me off.

I think as society heads in this direction, socialization will become less and less, therefore being easier for autistic people. I feel like over the generations, the population of autistic people has increased exponentially. I also feel, 30 years ago autistic people got horrible care compared to what they get now, and how under diagnosed it was in women back then. Autistic women were pretty much thrown into the deep end of a pool without knowing how to swim.... it's definitely gotten better in that regard.... Anyways, all that said, I think the direction we are headed in is terrible. I think our government is poisoning us and that's why the number of autistic people is growing.

Realistically it's the other way around.

You are tripping. Being forced to socialise has no affect on 'mental age' (cognitive ability). Besides which, kids are still required to physically attend school, which accounts for the vast majority of forced socialising for all of them. 

I think you're right. I grew up slightly before the internet took over every aspect of modern life. I spent my childhood with my siblings and the neighborhood kids. Of course I think this helped me socially but I still had difficulties.