Research Question; what is the correlation between the feeling of loneliness & autistic teenagers?
Thesis: Autistic teenagers are more at risk of experiencing feelings of loneliness due to society’s rejection.
Advocacy Plan By; Lisa Belkebir
End the stigma and start the conversation today. Research has found that teenagers with Autism spectrum disorders (ASD) are more likely to feelings of loneliness than teenagers who do not have ASD(. Today I would like to introduce a community that can live its full attention if we today as a society choose to make a change. The community I will be advocating for today is Teenagers with ASD also known as autism spectrum disorders. These kids have been rejected by society so many times due to their ASD. Teenagers with ASD are often left out in social settings such as school, clubs, sports, parks, and other events due to the struggles they may deal with due to ASD. Teenagers with Autism are often ignored by the American mainstream, The American mainstream fails to acknowledge the social challenges that kids with ASD face which can often carry on to their adult lives. Due to the lack of social interaction kids with ASD receive in their teenage years, it has been seen that further on in adulthood they struggle to maintain and hold lasting relationships. Many people might just look at this as a loss to the Teens with the autism community, whereas limiting this community to the best of their abilities also deprives our society of thriving as well because we are minimizing the people in our society from reaching their potential which means your society won’t reach its full potential either, that is because society will only thrive if the people allow it to, therefore restricting or limiting certain people in your society will be in loss not only will teens with autism and upcoming generations with ASD. However, if we as a whole rise and find a solution and how to end the limitations on children with ASD then not only will all teenagers thrive so will our society.
To anyone who may have or knows a teenager with ASD or Is an individual with ASD today, I would like to take the first step in advocating for your community. When observing your community of teens with an autism support group on the Facebook platform, I am disappointed as a society as a teenager myself have failed our organization and would like to take the
first step in owning up to it To all individuals with autism and family & friends of individuals with ASD today I take the first step to try to limit the number of children with ASD who experience the feeling of loneliness due to society’s rejection by creating an online platform for teens with ASD to chat and meet. Further, if my platform succeeds the goal will be that Teens all over the world to start forming and maintaining meaningful friendships, creating this platform gives many children the social experience they were revoked due to their ASD.
Throughout my observation many things rose to my attention that were very concerning, my first major concern was how socially left out these teens were. That was honestly such a reality check because we as a society are now aware of our actions, and my of those actions negatively impact many others around us. Many Teenagers with autism shared the same concern of bullying or rejection. UCLA Springer Science Programs published an article stating many social deficits individuals with ASD end up battling with long-term “Specific social deficits among individuals with ASD (Autism spectrum disorders) often include (but are not limited to) poor social communication, impaired social cognition, and lack of understanding of social cues”(Springer Science Ucla Programs)”. These social deficits go on to have an enormous impact on their lives which only hurts them, whereas we can prevent a few individuals with ASD from developing more social deficits by including them and treating them as your equals as they are and deserve to be treated but as fair and right as you. If parents were speaking on behalf of their child with ASD they would also share the same concern of their child not being able to make or keep friends. One very interesting fact that I learned when conducting my research is that” In one study, Bauminger and Kasari (2000) found that children and pre-adolescents with high-functioning autism reported greater loneliness and less satisfaction with their friendships as compared with their typically developing peers(Jorsen). Discovering this information doesn’t change that we need to learn how to adapt to everyone around us despite their differences. Why I choose to advocate for this community is a question I often get. I choose to advocate and observe this community because I am currently A swim Instructor for children of all ages, and when observing the teens with autism community when I saw many Children with ASD are later on socially excluded. I wanted to try to prevent that because many of my students with ASD have the potential to succeed just as much as my students without ASD, therefore I want to make sure to try to prevent as many social deficits as possible due to social rejection by creating a website with chatrooms for Children with ASD. In doing this I hope that many children don’t come home and feel this way “My son 17 high functioning and on the spectrum, he begged me to help him find friends he says when other kids find out he has autism they call him stupid or crazy and he was so depressed today when he came home from school he was crying (Teens with autism support Group Facebook), When conducting my observation this was a post that a parent had shared and when looking at my students I never want them to go home and experience the same pain and nor do I want any parents to see their child hurting for something they have no control over. Further, “children with autism who had more exposure to typically developing children were found to engage in more high-level interactions, as compared with children with autism who had no such exposure” (Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders). After Conducting all my research and observation I come to see that loneliness in Individuals with ASD is more common than realized, which also means we as a society have limited and rejected more individuals with ASD than realize. Therefore today I will begin advocating for the Teens with autism community & every Individual with ASD that may have been limited due to societal views.
Imagine waking up with no friends just because you might just a little different sucks right? Well today Is the first step in ending that. I have designed and created Online Chatrooms for All Children and Teenagers with ASD to socialize. I have designed two website platforms one containing all the chat rooms and the other is an intro website to access the chatrooms. What are these website and what do they do you may ask? I am here to tell you exactly that, The first Plan of my Advocacy Plan for Teens with ASD is by sharing the Introduction website through many platforms. One platform that I have already shared this link is the Community that I had conducted my observations on. I had reached out to the admin of the group and made her aware of my goals for her community and was very excited to give my plan a try and maybe start putting an end to this issue of loneliness in children with ASD. What does my introduction website contain? Well, when accessing the Introduction website you will open up the “The Chatty Bunch” Page and when your scroll down you first receive a brief blurb on what the website is. Later on in your search, you will come across the rules and regulations of these chatrooms, and then will be the form to request to be in a chat room. When Individuals fill out the form it doesn’t mean they will be guaranteed a chatroom, after receiving the form our chat team will review the form and then respond with a decision. Saying the individual is indeed who they claim to be they will be sent a link to the chatroom website in the email they had provided in the form and will be granted access to the chatrooms. In the chatroom website when opening the links, you will first be brought to a small blur of what this website is and then you have the different types of chat rooms and under each photo is the chatroom name, Information detailing what that chatroom will mainly intel of and the link to the specific chatroom associated. Currently, I have set up a few different chatrooms as follows online gaming, Game Nights, The Boys Bat Cave, Move Nights, and More on the way very soon. This is a project and an advocacy Plan I plan on taking much further than just a Facebook platform. Individuals with ASD are just as intellectual and worthy as every one of us therefore not only requires but deserves the same social interactions and respect as given to everyone else around them. Therefore, I encourage you to advocate for everyone around you and the next time someone is different embrace it doesn’t get rid of them.” It is commonly assumed that individuals with ASD prefer isolation or at least minimal social contact (J Autism Dev Disorder). This assumption should not be associated with all individuals with ASD. END THE STIGMA AND START THE CONVERSATION TODAY!
Annotated Bibliography:
“Loneliness, Friendships Quality and the Social Networks of Adolescents with High-Functioning Autism.” Shibboleth Authentication Request, https://nasenjournals-onlinelibrary-wiley-com.ccny-proxy1.libr.ccny.cuny.edu/doi/full/10.1111/j.1471-3802.2010.01148.x.
This article was one of the most important articles while conducting my research because I had concluded that most individuals with ASD are higher functioning, therefore, is why they struggle with maintaining and holding relationships due to people always limiting their abilities they would get “bored of the friendship” therefore are not able to experience longlasting friendships.
White, Susan W., and Roxann Roberson-Nay. “Anxiety, Social Deficits, and Loneliness in Youth with Autism Spectrum Disorders – Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders.” SpringerLink, Springer US, 4 Mar. 2009, https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10803-009-0713-8
This article was important to my research because it made me aware of the many social deficits that individuals with ASD later on face due to societal rejection. “Specific social deficits among individuals with ASD (Autism spectrum disorders) often include (but are not limited to) poor social communication, impaired social cognition, and lack of understanding of social cues” this is a statement that was posted that proved why my thesis is as.
Suzuki, Kota, et al. “The Relationships Among Autism Spectrum Disorder Traits, Loneliness, and Social Networking Service Use in College Students.” Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, vol. 51, no. 6, 2021, pp. 2047–56, https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-020-04701-2.
This article gives us a quick summary of how many children with ASD grow up facing many societal challenges due to issues that people in their society had created.
