Following some recent issues with an adult-aged autistic, I wanted to talk a little about social media and autism.
Social media can be a great thing for autistic adults. It will enable them to contact others with, in most cases, fewer risks than real-life interactions. It can give them a chance to connect with others on the spectrum and/or with similar interests, and a chance to be heard. Unfortunately, social media has a dark side too.
Social Media can help people follow their special interests
Social Media is Pervasive
I've heard from a lot of parents that they don't allow their kids onto social media. This works very well when they are children and when you have total control over their devices. It didn't work for my kids because they were far too tech savvy and could find a way to connect with any kind of device and could get through any firewall security we put in place.
Unfortunately, children grow into adults - and social media is everywhere. If your child has a networked electronic device, such as a smartphone or a modern computer games console, the chances are, they're already on social media.
In my experience, it's far better for kids to learn about social media and how to identify good and bad people on it, when they are children. They tend to hide their interactions too well when they are adults.
One of the best decisions I ever made when my kids were young was to put all of the computers in one room so that we all worked and played together. It kept conversations going and it meant that my kids would raise issues they found on social media very readily. This meant that by the time they were adult enough to want to take their devices privately, they were already good social media citizens.
What is Social Media?
When we talk about social media, many of us think about LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and perhaps Twitter/X. There's a lot more, there's WhatsApp, TikTok, Pinterest, Reddit, YouTube, Wechat, Quora, Twitch, Tumblr and Discord for starters.
Social media is baked into games, gaming platforms like Steam, and gaming consoles like XBox and PlayStation these days. When your kids are playing a multiplayer game, they're also on social media, chatting away with strangers and being influenced by faceless millions around the world. It's not something that you can turn off or regulate, so instead, you need to teach your kids how to be good social media citizens.
Why Social Media is Good for Autistic People
Autistic people often struggle to make friends. Sometimes those struggles are due to surface judgment by others. For example, people "in real life" (IRL), will often judge them by appearances, or by what they wear and how they behave.
Social media can reduce those contact points so that they can "be someone else online" or they don't have to show their faces or let their voices be heard. It can allow them to have meltdowns or anxiety issues offline without the risk that the group will see them. In real life situations, a meltdown can mean the instant loss of a friend group. This doesn't have to be the case on social media.
Social media can also help people bond over shared interests. Narrowly focused special interests are a key part of autism diagnosis and social media can bring people with those shared interests together where they can have meaningful and sharing discussions.
Sometimes people on the spectrum have interests that are well below their age. For example, they may develop a love for younger children's TV shows, such as SpongeBob, the Wiggles or children's toys. Sometimes their love of things some people might associate with children, such as Lego or model-building is life-long. Social media allows people of all ages to mix without the age necessarily becoming an issue.
Not all adults in children's social media groups are predators but unfortunately sometimes the mix can be difficult to manage. Autistic adults in social media groups aren't always aware that they are talking to children. They might not censor their own language and concepts appropriately and their interactions could get them into trouble.
This is another reason why I personally recommend that kids develop good social media skills at younger ages under the watchful eyes of their parents. If they don't pick up the skills as kids, they almost certainly won't as adults.
Don't be Yourself
Finally, my number one tip for anyone who may have control issues when using social media.Being yourself online requires a very stable online presence.
If you are inexperienced or prone to rants and meltdowns, it's best that you create an account using a different name. This will allow you to interact with much lower risk.
Sure, if you're connecting with real-life friends and family on a platform such as Facebook, you may have to "be yourself" there or they probably won't accept you as friends but when you're connecting on a gaming or a special interests level, consider using a separate account - one that isn't connected to your real-life persona.
This might mean for example that you go into Facebook and LinkedIn as yourself but you go into Discord, WhatsApp or YouTube under an entirely different name.
When using a different name unless you have a very unique first name, you can keep that one similar. For example, if your name is David, consider having "Davo" as your first name. This will make it easier for you to remember to respond when someone mentions your name.
For your own safety, consider not using a photo of yourself as a profile picture (unless you're appearing in your own videos on YouTube, in which case it doesn't matter). At the very least, make sure that your profile picture is exclusive to the new network. If you're being someone else on Discord, don't use the same profile picture from Facebook - and where possible, try to get a picture that is quite different on the two platforms, perhaps different hairstyles, perhaps changes in facial hair or simply and change in the lighting.
When using a different name, the other things that you shouldn't disclose, are your birthdate (which you shouldn't disclose anyway), your city and your suburb. Definitely not your full address and not your real email address.
A little online safety will go a long way towards protecting you and others around you when you are using social media.
