It dovetails a bit with my post of a few months ago about neurodivergence being the new cool stuff to be diagnosed with, but I see so many people being diagnosed late with autism, and that generally my generation (zoomers) seems obsessed with autism. It looks like the era of diagnosing every kid who is being a kid with ADHD is over, now everyone and their mother has autism.
It makes me wonder whether there are truly more autistic people that weren't detected before or simply if it's another overdiagnosed condition like ADHD. Trauma can make you display symptoms that can seem autistic and the culture we live in seems to increase the risks of autistic-like behaviour (tech addiction, especially in young children, who magically seem to lose their autism and catch back up on language and social skills once you take them off Cocomelon and daddy's phone/iPad), not to mention the norms' goalposts being constantly moved and the very unnatural behaviours and habits the society we live in imposes on us. Autism is now a spectrum, not so much a condition in itself, and I feel iffy about it: that means more and more of the population who doesn't stand this very unnatural way of being could fall under 'autistic spectrum disorder', which would imply that THEY are the ones with a problem, when in fact it's the society we live in that has a problem and repeatedly and chronically traumatizes us and keeps us in a state of constant hypervigilance.
On one hand I think some people, especially women and girls, fall under the radar and are truly autistic, but on the other, it feels like there are way too many autistics diagnosed for it to be "real". I don't put into question the reality of autism itself, don't get me wrong (although I don't think many people would get me wrong on here, it's not Twatter where they literally analyze your tweet just to find something to reproach you or attack you about, but just in case...) simply questioning whether it's truly autism in the majority of cases or something else. It can even be a completely logical and normal reaction to a very illogical and abnormal environment. We aren't so different from our cavemen ancestors, despite what modernity wants to push on us.
What do you think? I condensed my thinking a bit in this post as to not make a huge ass wall of text, and also because I'm not sure whether I'm saying bullshit or saying something that holds truth.