“Virtual Autism” May Explain Explosive Rise in ASD Diagnoses

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Some children who have been diagnosed with autism or autistic spectrum disorder (ASD) could dramatically benefit from not being exposed to electronic screens.

New clinical case studies have found that many young children who spend too much screen time—on TV’s, video games, tablets and computers—have symptoms labeled as “autism.”1 When parents take away the screens for a few months the child’s symptoms disappear. The term for this phenomenon is “Virtual Autism” or autism induced by electronic screens. The term “Virtual Autism” was coined by Romanian clinical psychologist Dr Marius Zamfir.

Romania witnessed an astonishing rise in autism among youngsters in a children’s hospital. The cause was unknown, so one psychiatrist dug into the activity logs the hospital collected on all admitted patients. In those records he found a strong trend: children presenting with autism were spending four or more hours a day watching some kind of screen: television, computer, tablet, or phone. Today in Romania, treatment of autism by screen withdrawal is considered routine and has public support.2

https://www.madinamerica.com/2017/08/vi ... diagnoses/

No, not Autism, more like loosing practice at interaction with others through spending all the time with the screen or other device.

Labeling the effect as any sort of Autism is inaccurate. Autism Is a neurological condition, not a result of spending time to excess in a nonsocial activity/

I’m not sure I’ll catch everything that’s wrong with this article, but I can try.

1. The increasing trend of Autistic people being identified as such is in no way “explosive” this is fearmongering.
2. There is no reason to say Autism Spectrum Disorder, just “autism” will suffice.
3. There are zero autism diagnoses. You cannot “diagnose” something that is not a medical condition.
4. ASD is just the medicalized name for autism there is no need to present autism and ASD as two separate options.
5. Autistic people generally benefit from BEING exposed to screens. You are advocating against accommodations at best and for active child abuse at worst.
6. How much screen time is “too much”? You can ask 100 parents and get 100 different answers. Clarifications, people, they are important.
7. You have used the word “symptoms” without specifying what disease they are a symptom of. If we haven’t verified that there even is a disease, we cannot confidently call them symptoms.
8. While I don’t have access to the abstract, considering the title “How TV, Video, and Toys Cause ASD” I don’t find your first reference to be a credible source.
9. If a child stops being Autistic after a few months of technology deprivation, then they weren’t Autistic in the first place.
10. “autism induced by electronic screens”? That’s not how this works. That’s not how any of this works.
11. At first, when reading the title, I thought “virtual autism” meant “non-autism things that look superficially similar to autism and get misdiagnosed”. Now that you have clarified it to mean “autism induced by electronic screens”, I must say you are using the term incorrectly. If that is also what Dr Marius Zamfir meant by “virtual autism”, then he too was using his own term incorrectly.
12. “Romania witnessed an astonishing rise in autism” Citation needed. Ironically that paragraph actually has a citation, but it doesn’t justify the section I’ve quoted.
13. “Children presenting with autism were spending four or more hours a day watching some kind of screen.” The correct conclusion, if we even believe that this evidence is really conclusive, is to say that autism causes screen time.
14. “Today in Romania, treatment of autism by screen withdrawal is considered routine and has public support.” That is horrifying. That is child abuse. That’s not something wrong with the article, but the fact that the article fails to point out the abusiveness is.
15. “startling” more fearmongering.
16. Autism statistics have gone up with the same amount of time delay after each new DSM release. If mental health professionals are still “puzzled”, those professionals are incompetent.
17. Center*S* for Disease Control. That’s a nitpick, but I am going for “everything.”
18. “stark” more fearmongering.
19. Diagnoses aren’t the problem, it’s the “behavioral interventions” that come after.
20. Citing the rising CDC estimate is not only fearmongering, it’s also (21) a cliché.
22. Okay, 1 in 45 children have a cat named Autism that they are living with, but how many children are Autistic?
23. “What is behind the exponential rise in the diagnosis of autism?” Answer: New releases of the DSM. I’ve solved the mystery. No need to write these articles.
24. Non-medical things don’t have “risk factors.”
25. Non-medical things don’t have “symptoms.”
26. Citing psychiatrists as experts on autism is a logical fallacy.
27. “rising tide” fearmongering
28. “Solutions” is literally the word that Nazis used to describe prevention of the Jewish problem.
29. No operational definition provided for the word “benefited”
30. No follow-up period needed one month will suffice. Much peer review. Very science. Wow.
31. No operational definition provided for the word “hindered”
32. No operational definition provided for the word “normal”
33. All language development including that of non-Autistic children has a period where words and their meanings have not yet been connected. For some words this persists into adulthood, as demonstrated by this author’s misuse of the word autism.
34. The second example of echolalia doesn’t support the point made by the first example. This is simply bad writing technique.
35. No operational definition provided for the word “healthy”
36. Considering the amount of media attention bogus autism causes get, I have serious doubts about the study in reference 3 having found the real one.
37. Needing to take a break is not the same thing as addiction.
38. Computers are used more often to create human interactions than to prevent them.
39. If screen time is painful why would children keep doing it?
40. Violent and aggressive behavior is not autism.
41. There’s that “explosion” word again.
42. There’s that “disorder word again.
43. Correlation is not causation.
44. Video game players are not screens they are humans.
45. There is an exponential rise in the author’s use of the word “exploding”
45. Countries that do not have as many screens also do not have as much psychiatric diagnosing this is called a coincidence.
46. Normal normal normal I still have no idea what this word means.
47. Non-medical things don’t have “symptoms.”
48. The word “treated” is correctly put in scare quotes but diagnosis and symptom aren’t please try to be more consistent.
49. There is no such thing as severely Autistic any more than there is severely female.
50. “Intensive play” is an oxymoron.
51. Recovered from what? You can’t recover from autism because it’s not a disease.
52. Old man yells at cloud.

That's the most dumbest article I've ever read. I think the absence of screen time would lead to massive meltdowns if the child has any favourite shows or websites.