Technology has introduced new behavioral dynamics in our lives that often catch us by surprise. What is consider normal and what is not, is often nothing but a matter of perspective. Today, there is a thriving tendency for diagnosing children as autistic (and/or having Asperger's) if they just lack the social intuition to communicate with textbook normality. This is not a completely unscientific assumption but a damaging societal narrative.
For those not familiar with the term, the Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) encompasses such a wide range of subjective behavioral traits that pretty much anyone can fall within it's boundaries at any given time. The ASD implies that the individual has ongoing social problems such as difficulty communicating and interacting with others or engaging in repetitive behaviors. If one does not have many interests (whatever that means in their definition), then you can qualify as an autistic individual. having limited interests or engaging in just a few activities is also an indicator.
The tragic part is that the symptoms are typically recognized in the first two years of life — an age that is very much still in process and those who do the evaluation are anything but experts. They simply take a generic form and tick away boxes based on their own intuition and parents feedback. Keep in mind that the scientific research on autism is extremely vague and it can be hardly be called scientific. Not a single study has been falsified or replicated due to the fact that the definition itself is based on the rather shady "soft" science of psychology (I call it social engineering). To top all these, If the individual has a hard time functioning socially and forming relationships — whether in class, school or work — then this is the strongest evidence for having ASD.
Before I continue, I want you to pause for a moment and ponder upon a few important but rather inconvenient observations. We live in a society that is increasingly dominated by screen communication. Our public schools are pretty much brainwashing facilities for creating numbed wage-slave livestock. Due to the abundance of information and convenience in communication and entertainment, most people prefer to spend more time alone. Last but not least, communication, any way you examine it, incorporates deception and manipulation. We smile to people to like us. We use specific words to get what we want. We dress in order to attract. Every single thing we do incorporates a great level of sociopathy because life is based on deception. If children do not learn how to lie by the age of 4 then they are considered problematic. From the advertising boards we look every day to the fake greeting psychotic smile that is painted in our faces to make our way through the day — all this, is considered normal because everyone is doing it. That's the science behind a disorder. If you deviate from the center of the bell curve, then you have a problem. If that is not social engineering, I don't know what is.
If a child is not able to take part in our cultural theatrics it does not mean that he has a mental disorder. If a child wants to play, scream and fuck shit up like nature designed it, then this is perfectly normal. If the child is able to sit on a chair, glued on a screen and obey like a little soldier by copying savoir-vivre behavior then that is what is really fucked up — not the other way round.
Adding to this, we have to accept the fact that children imitate their parents. More and more millennials are literally glued in front of a screen all day long. How do you think a child will develop in such an environment? Monkey see, monkey do. People forget that children almost never hear words. Children imitate actions and body behavior. This is also why communication is mostly non-verbal. If there is behavioral incentive at home, and other kids are also screen-zombified then they will not find anything interesting while interacting which one another nor will they learn from their parents no matter how much they bitch about it with advice. This is the single most important mistake parents do but almost everybody seems to be oblivious to it. Parent comes dead tired from work, opens the computer and then he wonders why his neglected child is a behavioral fuck up.
Parents also forget that sometimes the kid just has to be told "Hey don't say or do shit like X." Many parents have no clue how to raise a child. They rather believe the new postmodern meme that something magical will manifest into its character because "fuck yeah intuition". Nature has designed children to be brought up and shaped mainly by parents. This is the very reason why the brain in young mammals is so plastic.. Children, no matter how idealistic we want them to be, do not just absorb info magically and become critical thinkers. They have to be sculpted to act in a certain way. Most people confuse this by saying to children what to think instead of how to think.
Adding to all these, the technological comfort of our time has created children that just want things as easy as they can get them from a computer click. They will scream and generally be a pain in the ass if something does not land in their lap. Nobody will do anything to guide their behavior or teach them coping skills because the parents have their heads too much far up their asses with the lame excuse of "Oh they're autistic". On top of this, they get to put on an individual education plan that makes it is almost impossible for the teacher to fail them. Other students around them reinforce the same behavior and voila: every single parent requires an excuse for their irresponsibility and laziness by throwing the "my child is autistic" trump card.
Autism Spectrum Disorder is nothing but a persistent failure to learn social norms and develop fluency in the language of social archetypes. It's a refusal of adopting basic real-life social knowledge that either comes as a result of parenthood or technology. The excuse of the condition also implies that the child is somehow "gifted" in other areas and that gives leverage for reinforcing such a behavior. All a child has to do is demonstrate a subjective lack of interaction with other kids or show absence of social role models which by the way vary massively.
What we observe today is the equivalent to the environmental issues of the early 20th century, like lead and mercury poisoning. The only difference is that instead of physical pollutants, we now have behavioral ones. When there was no internet, people couldn't escape social interactions and they had to learn the rules of engaging with one another. This is not to imply that technology is bad. It is what it is. Times change. Nonetheless, just because we are caught up in the middle of this, it does not mean there is something wrong with us.
Prior to the internet age, those who are considered autistic either learned to deal with it or became recluses. Recluses that had a few interests and little interaction with people used to excel in their fields since everything they did, they did with massive obsession. This is also where I.Q falls short. Behind every single innovator we can easily see a person with what psychology falsely calls OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Behavior). Eventually these people will make it in their field. Bill Gates was one. Tesla was another. Much like recluses of the past, children do not learn social skills because simply the don't need to. They don't engage with many activities because our economic system focuses on specialization rather than a "jack of all trades" behavior that used to dominate in the past.
True autistic individuals are truly dysfunctional in every possible aspect. They are a very small percentage of the human population — not even a single digit. Yet, today with the ridiculous autism spectrum the numbers seems to grow like herpes in a brothel. This alone should indicate that we are talking about behavioral meme, not a biologically causative factor.
Parents often try to excuse such an autistic behavior with false correlations such as in the case with vaccinations. Sure, some children might react bad to some vaccinations but the "vaccines cause autism" statement is as accurate as measuring your fart's density on Everest. When autism itself has yet be defined properly, everyone jumps the excuse train with the first chance they get. It does not take long for irresponsibility to mask as some external factor such as screen glued parents excusing their own shortcomings with the generic label of autism.
The increase of autism might also be correlated with another factor; evolutionary fitness. We no longer have large wars and day to day survival duels that would naturally eliminate weaker individuals in the "autism spectrum". There's no more child labor either, where children (with problems or not) just do a menial task until they die and nobody notices the difference. Every single airheaded millennial wants their child to become the next Tesla but they all soon realize that their offspring are not cut up for it — no matter what they try to do. This makes them feel unease. Labeling them with the title" autistic" and offering them "special treatment" makes them feel better.
Professor Baron-Cohen demonstrated in a study that "Geeky parents", tend to have autistic children. The fact that there is no evidence demonstrating that is something genetic going on, it surely reinforces the idea that children simply reflect on parents' behavior. Simply put, parents who are focused on a skill that deals with things that most of society does not engage or understand, will more likely transfer similar behavior to their children. These children from their turn will have hard time engaging with other regular minded children.
Mental Disorders have become so fashionably accepted that is rather worrying. Every single problem we face today, every single thing we don't like, is labeled as a disorder and we pay someone else to solve it. We outsource our children's future because we deny to face the harsh truth. The autism spectrum cannot function as an excuse for categorizing our children as problematic but specially smart. If anything, the whole narrative speaks volumes about the behavioral shortcomings of the parents.
