In 2020, after a dozen years on Facebook, I decided to stop using social media. I was concerned about its increasingly addictive qualities, I was concerned about the reality of sharing too much personal information online, and I was concerned by what it might be doing to how I think – both in terms of my attention span and in terms of algorithm-driven echo chambers.
A few months ago I cautiously joined X (formerly Twitter). I wanted to join a platform on which I could promote my Dyspraxic Dad posts and connect to ‘the neurodivergence discussion’.
Three months in, I feel compelled to share my thoughts.
A couple of years ago I read Professor Jonathan Haidt’s The Anxious Generation. As I have written before, I have a deep interest in psychology and neuroscience. I found his argument compelling; the sheer weight of global evidence for the harm that social media is doing to our young people is difficult to resist. I have also listened to some fascinating shows warning against social media’s impact on how we think and behave – with some commentators feeling it represents a genuine threat to democracy and intellectualism. Part Three of BBC Radio 4’s How Reading Made Us is a prime example.
Three months on X has further convinced me that social media is a deeply polarising stage, where the actors in any given debate too often quickly form two opposing tribes – losing nuance and inching away from the centre ground.
The debates surrounding neurodivergence are a case in point.
There is so much anger. Not frustration. Anger.
The loss of nuance and the need for differential diagnosis
As I have previously posted, there is a lot of debate at the moment about the potential over-diagnosis of neurodivergent conditions. I feel strongly that differential diagnosis needs to be carefully considered – not because I have any doubt that neurodivergence is real, but because misdiagnosis can mean receiving the wrong care and support, leaving the true root issue unaddressed.
If, for example, someone's behavioural rigidity was an adaptation to childhood trauma, misdiagnosing them with autism will likely leave that trauma unresolved. That, in turn, can leave the individual at risk of insecure attachment, with all the relational risks to well-being that entails. The same applies to misdiagnosing a trauma survivor, whose adaptation was impulsivity, with ADHD. The importance of identifying and addressing unresolved trauma has been discussed extensively by clinicians and researchers such as Professor of Psychiatry Daniel Siegel in works including his seminal textbook The Developing Mind.
I try to limit myself to checking X just once a day. When I looked this morning, I read an articulate individual describing the well-known autism researcher Simon Baron-Cohen as a ‘eugenicist’. I have listened to Baron-Cohen speak many times and have enjoyed a couple of his books. He strikes me as a researcher deeply committed to learning about autism – and neurodivergence more broadly – in order to generate more informed assessment, treatment, and reasonable adjustments to education and employment settings, ultimately to improve the quality of life of those born with ASD. To describe someone of Jewish heritage as a eugenicist is remarkably insensitive – and completely disrespectful of his several decades’ work.
Grace over bitterness
I appreciate that many people who are neurodivergent feel deeply frustrated with the system. I share some of that frustration. I sometimes wonder how much happier my adolescence and early adulthood might have been had my dyspraxia been recognised early (I am 46 now and was diagnosed 11 years ago).
At the same time, I recognise that my parents, teachers, and GP were doing the best they could in the knowledge climate of the time. My parents both grew up in council housing and went straight from school to work. How were they to recognise the signs? How were they to know to flag these to a professional?
Whenever I write these blogs, I try to be nuanced. You can be the judge of whether I succeed. My aim is, where relevant, to try to see both sides of the story – to try to be reasonable.
Based on my first three months on X, it seems that the online neurodivergence discussion is in desperate need of a less polarised perspective. I hope I can do my little bit to help provide it.
