Is This Aspergian?

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When you are little, your social interactions are more about things than people. Your friends are the ones with the coolest toys, and when you visit a friend, it's not so much about the friend's company but more about what games you can play with the friend, what toys you can play with together. IE - The games and toys are more important than the other person.

Adults, though, are usually the opposite. They seems to make friends and go to parties for the social interactions. Activities are ancillary. Seems like people make this transition around high school with the prom party (in contrast to a 10-year-old's birthday party) being the climax of that.

But not all people change like that. For example, some adults are not interested in visiting a friend or having a guest over unless it involves, say, video games or "Magic: the Gathering". And that guest is largely replaceable, so long as the replacement wants to play the good xBox games or whatever else. The activities / toys are more grown up than a child's, but the activity / toys are still more important than the social interaction to this person.

I know that this is not a DSM diagnostic trait, but I am curious if this is more common with autistic and / or aspie adults than typical people.

Thanks!

Yes, I think there's something to this. And I really think for quote-unquote 'normal' kids, it happens earlier, like in junior high, ages 11-14 (no such thing as normal anyway! we are all un-'normal' in our own way)

Another example might be a doctor who goes to a conference and really wants to talk with a colleague about methicillin-resistant staph aureus, and which particular colleague, well, that's kind of replaceable.

This makes sense, but I don't know if it's an autistic trait or not.

When I was little, my socializations were non-existent, and when I grew up, I'm not sure what they were about, doing activities centered around objects or connecting with people, but it seemed like neither, but maybe that was only because my socializations were dysfunctional in both areas.

This pattern seems like it would apply to a lot of nerdy introverted people though, whether autistic or NT.

I think that's the case for most people and not just people on the spectrum.