this post was submitted on 24 Jun 2025
1178 points (99.3% liked)
memes
15794 readers
3242 users here now
Community rules
1. Be civil
No trolling, bigotry or other insulting / annoying behaviour
2. No politics
This is non-politics community. For political memes please go to !politicalmemes@lemmy.world
3. No recent reposts
Check for reposts when posting a meme, you can only repost after 1 month
4. No bots
No bots without the express approval of the mods or the admins
5. No Spam/Ads
No advertisements or spam. This is an instance rule and the only way to live.
A collection of some classic Lemmy memes for your enjoyment
Sister communities
- !tenforward@lemmy.world : Star Trek memes, chat and shitposts
- !lemmyshitpost@lemmy.world : Lemmy Shitposts, anything and everything goes.
- !linuxmemes@lemmy.world : Linux themed memes
- !comicstrips@lemmy.world : for those who love comic stories.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
The Science Vs. podcast just did an episode on this.
https://open.spotify.com/episode/2eKgmLJZrEKTbVzCVYzp0u
Spoiler: It's exactly as the meme describes. Autism rates are rising not because more people are becoming autistic, but because we’ve expanded the definition and improved how we recognize and diagnose it.
it's like how my government narrows down the definition of who's considered under poverty, then they celebrates that they now have less population under poverty. the exact moment when the last 5 years economy is getting worse.
Well, we at least have changed how we recognize and diagnose it, I'm not totally convinced it's 100% an "improvement". We've kind of jumbled up a whole bunch of people under a common umbrella and diluted the implications of the term, to the point where it tells you negligible practical information when someone is described as "autistic" or "on the spectrum".
Yeah, that's a totally fair concern and is one of the points the episode addresses. Researchers acknowledged that the definition has broadened, but they also emphasized that it reflects a better understanding of autism as a spectrum. It does make the label less specific, but it's also helped a lot of people. Especially women and people of color. It helped them get more accurate diagnoses instead of being misdiagnosed or ignored.
Overall, it's a stat worth celebrating as it means more people are getting the support they needed all along.
I hope that's the net result, just afraid that so many others will be dismissive of someone asserting autism, particularly with certain folks seeming to think being autistic is a license to be inconsiderate while claiming it also means you are smart and so is worth declaring a self-diagnosis.
There are a few dirks like Elon Musk and Richard Dawkins but I don't think the average person is aware enough of these people to really care