Life with Aspergers

In my last post I talked about the dangers of social media. Today I want to talk briefly about a recent event and how it needed to be dealt with. Names are changed to protect people.  The aim of this post is to educate parents and fellow autistics about how this problem started, why it became such a big deal and how to deal with it if and when it does happen to you. Even if you don't read this whole post, at least skip to the end where I give some recommendations for ensuring that this doesn't happen to you. How the Problem Started I received a call about an autistic boy who had an issue on social media. Essentially the crux of the problem was other family members who followed his channel on YouTube were being confronted with videos containing bad language and nudity. This included younger children, so clearly it was a issue.  For the sake of clarity, I'm going to call this autistic young adult "Robbie". Robbie is in his early twenties, he is fairly self-sufficie

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 n