Hello all. New user here, diagnosed with Asperger's/ASC last week after decades of just struggling with a lot of things and beating up on myself for being "different" and "weird". I'm tentatively hopeful that this diagnosis will help me gain more acceptance of myself and also more control over aspects of my life that I have struggled with, from anxiety disorders and anger management to social relationships and mobility issues. But one at a time. I wanted to start by asking for advice around a very specific problem: social media, particularly Facebook.
I have long been aware that my use of Facebook has been unhealthy, but have found that my attempts to reduce or recalibrate don't last very long. It's like a toxic dependency. Of course this kind of thing is hardly unique to ND people, and much has been written about the downsides to social media. See for example John Lanchester's excellent essay You Are The Product (here behind paywall https://www.lrb.co.uk/v39/n16/john-lanchester/you-are-the-product). But I think that my own use of it does strongly reflect my ASC, and in similar ways that I see from other autistic/ND online friends. Basically I post too much information on my wall to too many people far too often, and in a way that reinforces the obstacles I perceive to contacting individuals directly and maintaining my friendships. I always have stuff going on in my brain that I need to express and, while it's hard to make contact with someone to discuss it with in a controlled, healthy way, it's easy to blurt it out on Facebook.
The consultant who diagnosed me summed up exactly how I operate in situations with too many people: I can't process the information required to negotiate a large network of individuals, so I try to turn them into a single monolith. Facebook allows me to take this to an extreme. Instead of choosing one person to contact, working out what the most socially acceptable mode of communication and greeting is for this moment in my relationship to that person, what "throat-clearing" I need to get out of the way before getting on to what I need to talk about, the danger of overwhelming them with a massive info-dump, I just post something to "the hive mind" of my Facebook contacts, and get into a discussion with whoever happens to respond first.
The plus side of this is that I do sometimes have fulfilling and interesting conversations with people I would never have thought to contact directly, or get good feedback about the quality of what I post. But all too often I instead get locked into long and fruitless circular arguments with distant acquaintances. If I talk about my personal life and emotions it can be very upsetting for people such as my mum and my partner, and alienate work colleagues. Talking about my often very nerdy interests or getting into political and philosophical debates can open me up to ridicule, criticism or just the fear of being seen as a weirdo that has always eaten away at me.
When I need help with something, or feel the need to go out and talk to someone, I have always found it hard to summon up the courage to ask someone directly, and these days I never call and almost never text anyone unless they have contacted me first. But while just posting "anyone fancy a pint?" online is much easier, it doesn't tend to work, and I feel that it has intensified my tendency to neglect my friendships and often find myself more socially isolated than I am comfortable with.
Finally, I have always found it difficult to manage my time and focus my attention on what I want or need to do. Facebook makes this far far worse. This is of course a common complaint among NT people too, but in my experience I am far worse with it. I check frequently, even when I know there's almost never much in the way of new posts to interest me. I am extremely susceptible to clickbait, and find myself reading endless shitty churnalism articles I'm not that interested in that Facebook has suggested to me, even as the "to-read" pile of stuff I'm actually interested in grows. And I can scroll for inordinate amounts of time. It makes me feel so out of control of my time.
I often think about deleting my account altogether, and once did go cold turkey for about six months. But for so long it has become my primary channel of communication with anyone beyond a very small circle of people that I have more direct contact with (girlfriend, mum, sometimes flatmate when I have one) that the experience of when I did that was incredibly isolating. Partly because I've become so dependent on it but also partly because one expression of my ASC is that I find maintaining friendships and social relationships extremely difficult at the best of times and having a crutch like FB does fulfill a certain need.
If my suspicions are correct then many of you will have struggled with this. What strategies or methods can you recommend for either bringing my Facebook use under control and using it in a healthier way and/or for finding better ways to maintain contact with a larger circle of people than I can get my head around without it? Many thanks for any suggestions.
