Not Passive. Not Broken. Not Silent: How Autistic People Manage Stigma Online
A new study published in Autism in Adulthood gets something profoundly right: autistic people don’t just experience stigma. We navigate it, counter it and sometimes rewire the channels it travels through.
The study, titled "Stigma Management Strategies of Autistic Social Media Users," explores how autistic adults shape their presence on platforms like Twitter, Instagram and TikTok. The authors identify several recurring strategies: controlled disclosure of diagnosis, humor as shield and spotlight, curated posting and selective engagement. Each approach reflects an underlying tension: how do you stay visible without being consumed? How do you represent your truth without it being weaponized?
What this research captures—unlike so many deficit-framed papers before it — is that autistic people are not passive recipients of public opinion. We are narrators. And when the institutions built to "speak for us" still fail to listen, many of us speak online instead.
More Than Survival: It’s Craft
Managing stigma is not about hiding. It’s about making space. One participant in the study described choosing which posts to share based on the likelihood of backlash. Another framed self-deprecating humor as a way to address ableist assumptions before others could. Others used education as strategy — leveraging infographics, story threads or trendjacking as advocacy.
This isn’t appeasement. It’s adaptation under pressure. It’s craft. And it tells us more about autistic ingenuity than any MRI scan or eye-tracking study ever could.
What Platforms Won’t Fix
Of course, none of this happens in a vacuum. Algorithms reward conformity and punish nuance. Moderation systems often misread autistic expression as aggression or misinformation. And while hashtags like #ActuallyAutistic have built solidarity, they’ve also made autistic creators more visible to trolls, skeptics and digital voyeurs.
The study doesn’t dive deeply into platform design — but it should. Because stigma management isn’t just a personal burden. It’s a design flaw. When systems amplify the loudest and least nuanced voices, they force marginalized users to constantly calculate the cost of being understood.
Not a Toolkit. A Call.
This isn’t just a checklist of coping mechanisms. It’s a roadmap to resilience that shouldn’t be necessary. And yet, here we are: learning to hold both visibility and safety, both clarity and survival.
For researchers, this study is a reminder: If you want to understand autistic experience, don’t just code our behavior. Watch how we code ourselves.
For platforms: What would it mean to center neurodivergent design principles? To treat ambiguity not as a bug, but a signal?
And for the rest of the world: We’re already speaking. The question is whether you’ll stop scrolling long enough to listen.