Autism in the United States has slowly become a more common occurrence. Right now approximately 1 in 68 American children are found be on the autism spectrum, this is approximately a ten-fold increase from 40 years ago.
Some of the major symptoms of Autism are characterized by social-interaction difficulties and communication challenges, but the severity of these two symptoms vary from case to case. Researchers believe that the causes of the social and communications challenges result from multiple issues within the brain. One of the cases that researchers claim as a cause are toxins that can be introduced to the fetus. Researchers believe that valproic acid effects multiple genes that are associated with autism. One of these pathways that a research group discussed was the result of an increase histone H4 acetylation around promoter sites of proneural transcriptions factors of autism related gene, neruolign 1. Also the researchers saw that valproic acid was able to up regulate heat shock protein-70, which is know to have neuroprotective effects.
So if I lost you, valproic acid in fetuses basically affects the brains development. These effects add to the increased risk of developing Autism. These effects also have also been attributed to being some of the causes of the social-interaction difficulties and communication challenges that people of Autism tend to deal with.
Now its time to look at the life of “normal” 21st century children.
In todays world technology runs everything and for children in the 21st century it is not uncommon for them to have a smart phone, a tablet, and video game system but the question that is now being asked is, “Is technology making the world ‘Autistic’?
With kids spending so much time today on technology, face to face communication has slowly become a lost art. Some psychiatrists believe that due to the significant time children are spending on various devices they are seeing children as young as five starting to snuggle with reading others’ emotion, being less empathetic and simply struggle with communication skills in general.
So the results that these psychiatrists are seeing are similar social symptoms to those of children who are diagnosed with Autism. So does that mean technology is making the world Autistic? Or is technology going be the new standard for communication?
People will believe what they want but I believe that the world has the potential to become more Autistic like. I would not go as far as some people and say the technology is resulting in Autisms but I can definitely agree with the fact that technology has cases face to face communication to become obsolete. Technology in the 21st century is a necessity to survive in school and in the work place but as a society (especially being in a westernized society) we need to remember to teach kids how to communicate face to face. The world cannot and will never become fully digital in our lifetimes, there will always have to be some form of face to face communication. As parents and future parents we need to remember that and help cut back on the time kids spend using their devices. I know that decreasing time of devices has been a common theme lately but it is something that needs to be addressed or else the world will become autistic like and face to face communication will be lost.
****I do want to note that I do not believe that being Autistic in any way is a bad or negative thing.
Is the world becoming Autistic?
