Autism, the Internet, and the future

So I read this today, wherein Temple Grandin calls for more active, expansive parenting for kids on the spectrum.  She talks about how kids get stuck on their autism, and stay on the computer all day instead of attending social events or other activities.  Parents will often talk for their kids, regardless of whether those kids are verbal or not.  Instead of allowing this to happen, Dr. Grandin suggests calm instruction on social skills, concrete demonstrations, and pushing kids out of their comfort zones a little at a time.  

The overall message of this article is good.  Dr. Grandin touches on something I've seen repeatedly: that parents of people on the spectrum can be incredibly overprotective, to the point of crippling their children. Several of my peers on the spectrum have parents who seem to insist on overseeing their interactions, despite that their kids are well over 20 and accounted their own guardians.  This is counter productive, in my opinion.  If you have a kid who's not good at math, you take extra time to teach them how to be better at math.  The same should hold true for social skills, but often it doesn't.  

There is, however, a place for people with a lack of social skills: the Internet.  The Internet is an amorphous thing, but within it, there are groups of people clustered around shared interests.  In those groups, where people consider everyone there to be "one of us," a person on the spectrum can find a place to belong, and people who will handwave a little odd behavior.  When I was younger, I frequented forums and IRC chatrooms that centered around TV shows I liked and computer games I played.  From one of those places, I met my first friend.  He was patient when no one else was.  He listened, and he cared.  He wasn't perfect, but without him, I would still be under the assumption that I was unworthy of having friends or being treated like a person.  No one in real life could convince me of that.  Not my parents, not my brother, and not any of the people I crossed paths with during school.  It took the kindness of a person from across the Atlantic Ocean, and I never would have met him without the Internet.  

There's a certain thought process that goes on with the older generations, the ones that grew up before the Internet became a widespread thing.  The mentality that only in person interaction is real, and online interaction is somehow fake, or lesser.  I challenge that mentality.  I met my first friend online, and he changed my life and made me believe I was worth caring about.  I dated Chris, my boyfriend, long distance, keeping the relationship alive with Skype and instant messages, until he moved here to be with me.  If someone wants to argue that those two relationships are fake, or lesser than the brief friendships or acquaintanceships I've had with various people in real life, then they'd better have some pretty good evidence.  

I suspect, though I can't say for sure, that neither relationship was possible without the Internet.  Simon, my first friend, I would never have met at all.  I've been across the Atlantic precisely once in my life, and that for less than a month.  Hardly long enough to make the emotional connection I'd need to be convinced of my worthwhileness as a person.  And Chris...  It's hard to get to know a person in person.  There are so many words to sort through, so much information to gather and crosscheck.  It muddles things up.  Online, there are just words.  You have to make your point with just words.  It's much easier to sort, and much easier to understand, and the entire conversation is laid out for you to reference if you forget a point.  Perhaps, given how many books I read as a kid, that makes text conversations more real than any face to face interaction.  I'm also uniquely unsuited to talking about emotions and heavier subjects in person.  If something affects me emotionally, I'll often tear up, which in turn constricts my throat.  It also makes whoever I'm talking to uncomfortable, and frustrates and annoys me.  Given how many factors come into play with getting to know someone, I don't think it's unfair to say Chris and I might never have ended up together if all we had was in-person interaction.  

I have another point to make about the Internet and electronic interaction: I suspect it's the way of the future.  At least half the interviews I hear about these days are through the phone or on Skype or some other electronic means of communication.  Job hunting is electronic, with applications available online.   LinkedIn has become a standard for job-hunters.  If you don't have filled out profile, your chances of being hired without an "in" are very low.  The technology industry is truly an industry, with hundreds of thousands of different careers.  It hasn't been possible to know everything about computers for at least two decades.  You can specialize in fixing hardware (screens, hard drives, CPUs, cases, graphics cards) and not know more than the rudiments of Mac or Linux.  You can know scads about how to use Microsoft Office and other office software, but be completely abysmal at fixing even the most minor problems with a whole system of Windows or Linux.  Video games have changed from simple one-task games like Pacman or Pong, to vast worlds with hundreds of things to do, such as World of Warcraft.  There are VR headsets in the works: really good ones, not the shoddy, clunky kind that showed up the 90s.  Perhaps most tellingly, nerds have replaced jocks in popular culture as the new "cool." 

When the Internet really took off in 1993 or so, I was very young.  I didn't personally get access to it until around 2000.  So I lived with it and without it, and perhaps straddling those eras gives me an insight into it that others lack.  I strongly suspect that electronic interactions will slowly replace in-person interactions.  There will always be a place for in person interactions, but perhaps those interactions won't be quite so complicated.  I do not think people will suddenly stop being social.  As a species, we're hardwired to be social.  Adding the Internet isn't going to change that.  We may find ways to make a cocktail party online instead of at someone's house, perhaps.  Then I suppose I can be a wallflower on the Internet as well as in real life.  

I do think things may become less complicated, socially.  There's been a lot of hubbub in the past about how kids don't go outside to play any more, they just sit at their computers all day.  This is true for both autistic people and for neurotypical people.  And that, I think, is eventually what's going to make things simpler.  Neurotypical people are born with the ability to learn social skills without trying.  That doesn't mean they'll learn them, however.  Given the wrong environment or insufficient interaction, a neurotypical person can be mistaken for a person on the spectrum by the casual observer, simply because they don't know how to make small talk or what to say in a given situation.  You can find such people in the homeschooled population, for instance.  Combine the staying inside all day on the computer with unknowing neurotypical kids, and you get less socially adept kids across the board.  The new normal will be (if it isn't already), being slightly socially inept.  If everyone's a little bit awkward, the lack of social intuition we on the spectrum suffer won't matter as much.