Perceiving Affordances Differently: The Unintended Consequences When Young Autistic Adults Engage with Social Media

Social media can facilitate numerous benefits, ranging from facilitating access to social, instrumental, financial, and other support, to professional development and civic participation. However, these benefits may not be generalizable to all users. Therefore, we conducted an ethnographic case study with eight Autistic young adults, ten staff members, and four parents to understand how Autistic users of social media engage with others, as well as any unintended consequences of use. We leveraged an affordances perspective to understand how Autistic young adults share and consume user-generated content, make connections, and engage in networked interactions with others via social media. We found that they often used a literal interpretation of digital affordances that sometimes led to negative consequences including physical harm, financial loss, social anxiety, feelings of exclusion, and inadvertently damaging their social relationships. We make recommendations for redesigning social media affordances to be more inclusive of neurodiverse users.