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[SalmonGod]

I learned much healthier social skills by having positive interactions online than solely unhealthy interactions in person could do for me.  And trust me, I tried.  I was not anti-social before the internet.  And I did not become anti-social after internet.  I became decently socially functional by my early 20's.  I don't believe that would have ever happened if I had never got online.  I think I would have ended up in a terrible place.

I'm not denying that the internet culture and socialization has serious issues.  Especially today.  It was different in the 90's.  Far less toxic, and more conducive to meeting someone and getting to know them personally.  But I still think that its availability is a good thing, even to teenagers.

[MorleyDev]

A search takes me to Autism Speaks as a USA charity, and they have an email and call center that they say can help people with autism find support groups and whatnot. Not being in the USA or knowing your area I can't offer specific advice, but maybe they can? Have you contacted similar services in the past?

I was fortunate enough to have people around me who made the effort first, not everyone is so lucky.

[JoshuaFH]

I think what scriver is getting at is that Internet and Videogames provide an easily available slippery slope that allows bad problems to get worse. I've spent an awful lot of time navel gazing, trying to suss out the core of my personal problems, and why I was such a reclusive internet rat from almost the moment I had a computer with steady internet access, and the reasons can be summed up thusly:
-Absence of a father or father figure, and even worse, all potential male figures being idiots.
-Mother that was nigh-constantly emotionally unstable and violent; contributing to a lot of emotional trauma.
-Uprooted childhood, moving from one place to another, into communities that it was impossible to meld into.

I don't know you that well nenjin, but from the little personal stories you just told I'd imagine you didn't have it that bad growing up and thus got to be emotionally healthy for the most part. Emotionally healthy people can use the internet exactly as it was intended: as tools for information or enjoyment, and leaving it exactly at that. Emotionally unhealthy people, desperate for an escape from their lives, are given a means of egress that recedes infinitely into cyberspace.

This can easily lead to the sick person becoming entrenched in digital activities, not because they truly enjoy them but because they don't hurt; and while the internet can teach a lot, it can't teach the kind of complex social skills that only being face to face with other people can teach. Every second spent in front of the screen is a second spent feeding an illness rather than finding a cure.

So, to summarize, the internet doesn't create the problems, but it can makes them worse, all the more so because it seems like a harmless activity that keeps you off the streets and away from drugs, but it is that same seeming harmlessness that lets people get caught up in it for long, long periods of time.

[MorleyDev]

But it can also be that crack in the door that helps things improve. If you struggle in person, you can get to know people first online. Playing video games over the internet with your IRL friends is a great way of having a goal to keep everything focused whilst allowing for you to learn about each other without it being overwhelming. You can get mentorship on topics that simply isn't available to you locally.

The internet is a great magnifying glass, it can make the bad worse and the good better. The difficult thing is finding a way not to throw the baby out with the bathwater. And that takes action in the real world, can't be fixed by the internet. It means solid mental health services, teachers trained to recognise young people experiencing problems and available councillors to deliver on it, support groups setting up that actually work for parents, adults and children alike. All the things the USA seems terrified of actually doing but are the only way to actually fix the problem.

[MrRoboto75]

Autism Speaks is like telling me to donate to PETA because I like animals.  When they regularly euthanize healthy pets.

AS literally tries to scare parents into worrying if their kid is born autistic like it's going to be a massive burden that's ultimately going to destroy their family and marriage.

Furthermore, I do not have time to volunteer as I like being able to eat, so I need to work for a salery.  And the places I have volunteered for rejected me outright anyway.

[MorleyDev]

Ah, not USA based and unlike PETA these charities largely lack international recognition so no idea what the good ones would be at the end of the day. Fully admit that.

To turn this into a teaching moment, may I suggest that you could have stopped and considered why I would suggest such a charity rather than hopefully a more reputable one? The phrasing you used could come across as aggressive, and people often have a tendency to react to perceived aggression with aggression of their own. As such, a part of modulating my behaviour over the years has been learning to try to express myself in ways that do not risk illiciting such a response. Not always successfully mind you, but recognising the words I use matter and trying to take the time to ensure I express myself in certain ways has been impressed upon me over the years.

[Maximum Spin]

Just a sec.

I'm not even a "Trump supporter". I only voted for the guy because I think his victory is marginally less likely to lead to a civil war, and honestly, I'm fine with civil war anyway, I just don't want to personally act to bring it closer.

What will happen in the world is outside your control.

LMAO that you don't find the logical contradiction disturbing.

Lol what?
I say "What will happen in the world is outside your control."
I say that I voted for a candidate who didn't win, demonstrating that the election was outside my control.
Contradiction how?

"What will happen in the world is outside your control" doesn't mean "so you sit around and do nothing because it doesn't matter". It means "so you do whatever the fuck you want because it doesn't matter".

[MorleyDev]

"One must imagine Sisyphus happy"

Blanket Hedonism quickly runs into the problem of suicide for me. If all one is doing is trying to fill time whilst waiting for death, then there's a more efficient way of achieving that same result. The act of trying to leave the world better than you found it, in a micro and/or macro scale, is a worthwhile goal to aim towards in and of itself. A perfect world is an impossibility, but impossible does not mean not worthwhile striving for. A trend towards infinity is still a better ride than a downward spiral.

[Doomblade187]

Roboto, a quick Google shows a lot of smaller regional support groups that aren't AS, so there's some hope. Not too familiar with the search for that though, sorry.

[MrRoboto75]

To turn this into a teaching moment, may I suggest that you could have stopped and considered why I would suggest such a charity rather than hopefully a more reputable one?

Because you insist a five minute Google search is superior to whatever searching I've done over the past two years post aspie diagnosis?  That the only reason I never found help is simply I didn't look hard enough, or better yet, looked at all?

[feelotraveller]

Just a sec.

I'm not even a "Trump supporter". I only voted for the guy because I think his victory is marginally less likely to lead to a civil war, and honestly, I'm fine with civil war anyway, I just don't want to personally act to bring it closer.

What will happen in the world is outside your control.

LMAO that you don't find the logical contradiction disturbing.

Lol what?
I say "What will happen in the world is outside your control."
I say that I voted for a candidate who didn't win, demonstrating that the election was outside my control.
Contradiction how?

"What will happen in the world is outside your control" doesn't mean "so you sit around and do nothing because it doesn't matter". It means "so you do whatever the fuck you want because it doesn't matter".

But your excuse/reason for voting Trump was "I just don't want to personally act to bring it closer" which acknowledges that what you do in the world matters.  And remember the context was you saying to someone else not to bother with political action because "what will happen in the world is outside of your control".  That is one rule for you and another for someone else and/or one rule for defending yourself and another for acting others = an excess of bad faith on your part.

[WealthyRadish]

do whatever the fuck you want because it doesn't matter

trying to leave the world better than you found it, in a micro and/or macro scale, is a worthwhile goal

Perhaps, but what if you just embraced failure and lived online as a narcissistic crank instead, honing your perfect edge from your hovel in the sticks?

Well, we don't need to ask "what if", we'll see ourselves in 3, 2, 1...

[Folly]

Being looked at, expressions, body language, sensations and presence, that is what socialising is.

No, that's what my personal hell is going to be when I get there.

But you are right that an overwhelming majority of the population enjoys that crap. At least in the US. Worldwide statistics are something else.
But regardless, nobody is locking anybody in a room and forcing them to stare at a screen all day. People can go out and socialize as much as they want. But everyone has to discover on their own what makes them happy, and then they should have the freedom to pursue that happiness however they want.

[MorleyDev]

Because you insist a five minute Google search is superior to whatever searching I've done over the past two years post aspie diagnosis?  That the only reason I never found help is simply I didn't look hard enough, or better yet, looked at all?

I didn't know when you were diagnosed or searched and a lot has changed in the last few years alone towards support and understanding (I myself was only formally diagnosed a year ago). If you said and I missed that, I apologise. I am also aware that when one encounters failure, searching again is very difficult (believe me, I know that one all too well). As such, an outside perspective can sometimes help reinvigorate and sometimes not when coming from the point-of-view of someone who has been in a similar place, and felt it was worth the effort. Regardless I have clearly caused offence and overstepped a line, my apologies for this.

[Starver]

I've written and rewritten an assessment of my own life, growing up pre-Social Media, pre-Web and (effectively) pre-Internet (as in that only upon entering Further Education did I get to know of it, and it was years before The Eternal September).

In the context of today's world... Would I benefit from electronic communities? Not sure.  Would I waste my potential by having my head stuck into a phone like I had been in books? Probably - arguably I'm doing that now.  Would I have found myself unable to escape the (sometimes incessent) playground 'bullying', not usually physical but certainly psychological? Well, it'd depend, and I hope not, but there's always the Molly Russell-type of situation.


I think the balance between being able to grow up on the internet and being forced to grow up on the internet is a big question. It's a curate's egg.

(Hmm, 19 replies since I started this... Posting anyway.)

edit: The following was not part of the above post, but bit of a prior version that somehow escaped every re-edit since due to the offset of multiple line-feeds and no indicative scrollbar on the textarea window. I came back in to edit it out properly, but now I'm here I've decided it might as well stand, but with this little explanation... Which is why it probably looks like a proto-version of the above.

I first got onto the Internet when starting Further Education. Someone I knew (got to know, there) successfully petitioned for access to a trans-support newsgroup and then later took a year out to actually transition. I believe it helped. Someone else was thrown off campus (almost physically) for various electronic misdemeanours including what might have later been called cyberstalking.

Since then, as an adult in a now wired-up world I've seen a politically right-leaning good friend go very extremely right-wing (may or may not have been heading there, but certainly has been enabled) but I've also seen great benefits - especially recently with actual/effective lockdown conditions.