Autism and Doomscrolling
A balancing act: Navigating information overload and emotional well-being successfully
I lived in a “mind cave” (I think I am coining that phrase) during the 1980s, between ages three and thirteen. I did not take in events about the world as they were happening. My parents, who got under desks during duck and cover drills, were well aware of the dangers of destruction as children, but they could go on without it affecting them too much.
They grew up in an era where the thought of death was all too real daily. In the early 1950s, when my parents were less than ten, The Day the Earth Stood Still debuted in theatres. Humanity had just unleashed its most destructive weapon, the atomic bomb, in its 200,000 year history as Homo Sapiens.
The movie featured alien caretakers who took time from their busy schedules to warn us of the power we had just unleashed. Klaatu and his robot companion Gort, with all of their otherwordly powers, arranged for a scenario similar to today’s Netflix feature film Leave The World Behind, except for hospitals and aviation staying intact, to shake up the inhabitants of our planet, get their attention, and let them know they were being watched by galactic forces who were very unhappy with what we were up to.
At the end of the movie, Klaatu gives a foreboding and even threatening address to the inhabitants of Earth:
I am leaving soon and you’ll forgive me if I speak bluntly. The universe grows smaller every day and the threat of aggression by any group anywhere can no longer be tolerated. There must be security for all or no one is secure. Now this does not mean giving up any freedom, except the freedom to act irresponsibly. Your ancestors knew this when they made laws to govern themselves and hired policemen to enforce them. We, of the other planets, have long accepted this principle. We have an organization for the mutual protection of all planets and for the complete elimination of aggression. The test of any such higher authority is, of course, the police force that supports it. For our policemen we created a race of robots. Their function is to patrol the planets in spaceships like this one and preserve the peace. In matters of aggression, we have given them absolute power over us. This power cannot be revoked. At the first signs of violence they act automatically against the aggressor. The penalty for provoking their action is too terrible to risk. The result is we live in peace without arms or armies, secure in the knowledge that we are free from aggression and war, free to pursue more profitable enterprises. Now, we do not pretend to have achieved perfection, but we do have a system, and it works. I came here to give you these facts. It is no concern of ours how you run your own planet, but if you threaten to extend your violence, this Earth of yours will be reduced to a burned-out cinder. Your choice is simple: join us and live in peace, or pursue your present course and face obliteration. We shall be waiting for your answer. The decision rests with you.
A similar theme is repeated in the 2011 feature, The Adjustment Bureau, when Matt Damon’s character goes off script from a plan to keep the world from destroying itself. To correct or “adjust” for these missteps, cue the would-be supernatural or artificially intelligent caretakers called “agents” and their boss, who is the unseen “chairman.” Agent Thompson, one of the agents who works under the Chairman, tells Damon’s character…
You know, we actually tried Free Will before. After taking you from hunting and gathering to the height of the Roman Empire, we stepped back to see how you’d do on your own. You gave us the Dark Ages — for five centuries — until we finally decided we should come back in.
The Chairman thought maybe we just needed to do a better job of teaching you how to ride the bike before we took the training wheels off again. So we gave you the Renaissance, The Enlightenment, The Scientific Revolution…we spent six hundred years tempering your passions with reason. Then, in 1910, we stepped back again. Within fifty years, you brought us the Depression, Fascism, and The Holocaust and capped it off by bringing the entire planet to the brink of destruction in the Cuban Missile Crisis. A decision was made at that point that we should step in again before you did something we couldn’t fix.
This tried-tested- and-true formula has been used in movies and books so many times it’s pointless to try to count. Otherworldly beings or AI take over the earth because human beings aren’t grown up enough to be responsible stewards of the planet.
My Mind Cave
When I grew up, it was also during the Cold War. As a five-year-old, I remember everyone talking about a 1983 television movie called The Day After, where the world gets obliterated by nuclear weapons, but that didn’t register with me in any meaningful way. Supposedly, the movie scared the living daylights out of President Reagan, making him very depressed.
A few years later, our elementary school class watched a movie called Amazing Grace and Chuck about a boy who wouldn’t speak until the world abolished nuclear weapons. He starts a worldwide movement that forces the hands of world leaders. Lo and behold, he accomplishes his mission in the end. What made an impression on me was not that nuclear weapons could blow up the world but that I had just met Alex English (one of the movie’s stars) and gotten his autograph. It is safe to assume I was not following the movie’s plot too closely.
War Games? Nope. Didn’t get it.
Land of Confusion, by Genesis. Nope. Even the music video failed to make an impression on me, and it’s very freakish but ingeniously makes its point about the state of the world at the time while its ire is on a “senile” Reagan (the song has the best instrumental bridge ever!).
As an adult, I worry every day about the world’s end. Of course, I do — so do most of us aware of climate change, the threat of losing our democracy, and irrational actors leading (or wanting to lead) our world. Anyone who says they are not aware is in major denial, in my opinion. But during peak times during the Cold War when I was a child and the environment around me was screaming “Doomsday,” I didn’t get it.
The closest I ever came to understanding the peril of the 80s was when a couple of other kids and I wrote a little skit called “The Legend of Doomsday.” But I certainly didn’t know what that meant in the era’s zeitgeist. I did not grow up knowing anything about the Book of Revelation. I think the other kids who wrote that skit with me were familiar with that biblical ending finale of a book.
I choose to filter it out — I think, to remain sane.
What if I Knew the Truth?
Well, the obvious answer is it would have ruined my childhood, at least until I turned 13 or so. With my autism and the incessant nature of how my mind works, I would have ruminated on the subject. I probably would have been asking my dad daily if Reagan and Gorbachev were in a good mood as if he would have known. I would have wanted to see if we had enough food to survive, and my totally non-prepper parents would have scoffed it all off as this being the neurotic behavior of a nervous child.
I’m not sure what’s more remarkable: the fact that I could totally block out any awareness of the news from that decade as I was living through it, or we actually did not go through nuclear annihilation.
Autism, Oscillation & An AA-Like Introduction
Just as I like music that oscillates back and forth in intensity from dramatic to serene within the same piece (see my Mahler article), I believe the autistic mind functions this way due to how we take in information. Sometimes, as adults, we become so consumed by the news and injustice that we can be the fiercest social justice warriors on the planet. Other times, world events are so overwhelming that just thinking about the existential concerns that could bring down the human race drains our batteries entirely.
I saw this a few years ago at a Hanukkah party in 2022. One of the autistic attendees could not stop talking about when she would get her next booster shot. She would ask everyone there if we had already gotten our boosters and then repeatedly asked us throughout a three-hour dinner party. I could see the fear in her eyes. Truth be told, my anxiety was just as great as hers, but I was masking it.
So now I am an adult, and I’m autistic. And like most socially conscious autistic adults who are not currently living in a mind-cave like I was during the 1980s, I’m painfully aware, too aware, of what our country and the world might be facing very shortly without specific awareness of when the calamity will happen. And I don’t have the fortitude nor skill of a Greta Thunberg to feel like I can do anything about it on a macroscopic level.
And hello, my name is Nick, and I am a doomscroller.
Are you as well? Good. Let’s talk about it.
What Can We Do?
Most people would agree that there has to be a middle ground between doom-scrolling the day away and living in a mind cave. Both are not good places to be in this world. I, myself, have lived between both of these extremes. One gives the bliss of ignorance, which is only valid when there is no actual crisis, and the other is paralyzing. As Aristotle would encourage us to find the golden mean, that will be my advice.
Autism often brings a strong sense of justice, particularly social justice. Turning that part of our personalities off would be counterproductive because of information overload dealing with world events. So stay engaged to the point that you can still feel grounded. If you are starting to feel overwhelmed, pull back. You are NOT a bad person because you are unplugging from The Matrix for a few days or even a week. You are following the “airplane rule” — put your own mask on before assisting others!
When or if you engage in advocacy that intersects with news that hits home, don’t be ashamed to take breaks if you can.
Take a break from this and other websites when you need to. You will always find a variety of urgent concerns here or anywhere in the media. When you want to feel engaged again, come on back. But remember the airplane rule first.
Set aside a specific part of your day to consume the news, preferably not right before bed or when you have to work. Consuming the news and transitioning to a social encounter is challenging for many of us on the spectrum. I usually engage with the news when I know I will be alone for the foreseeable future that day.
Remember that “trying to stay in the present” is not a privileged idea. There are some influences on the left (and I lean strongly to the left) who might make you feel guilty if you ever take the time to address your own needs. You don’t need to bleed your soul away to please others by constantly being engaged. You might hear something like…“Think of how privileged you are to do this when others can’t.” Please don’t listen to them! You do what you need to do to survive and not be too overwhelmed.
Also, remember that the media exists to make a profit. There will always be more bad news in the world than good. This doesn’t mean you should never take what the media says seriously, such as warnings about Covid-19. But it does mean every network engages in some sensationalism. It doesn’t mean, however, that bad things can’t happen. Sometimes, the media is right about the things they are warning us about. Bad things can happen, and they will. But you can choose not to focus on it at that particular moment. Just as we all know we are going to die someday, it would not do us any good if that was the only thing we thought about.
Regarding Medium readers and authors, we aren’t in it for profit — as much as the industries are. But we also don’t have professional fact-checkers. Check original sources. If a Medium author asserts the state of the world’s affairs, see where they get their information. Ensure it checks out with the other data points you know about the subject. If it doesn’t, it might not be correct.
Miyagi-Do: It’s All About Finding Balance
The Karate Kid movie did make an impression on me as a kid. I was bullied, and when I saw Daniel Larusso beat up Johnny Lawrence at the tournament, it made me happy. But I always gravitated to Mr. Miyagi — his unflappable demeanor and wise words. When giving Daniel advice, he often spoke about the importance of balance.
Lesson not just karate only. Lesson for whole life. Whole life have a balance. Everything be better.
In this intricate dance of information intake and emotional processing, especially for those of us on the autism spectrum, lies the challenge of striking a balance. We often oscillate between being deeply affected by world events to the point of paralysis and retreating into a more sheltered mental state to preserve our well-being. This balance is not static; it’s a dynamic equilibrium that requires constant adjustment, much like riding a bike.
For us autistics, our intense focus and deep sense of justice can drive us to engage with the world’s problems passionately. Yet, this same intensity can also overwhelm us by the magnitude of these issues. It’s crucial to recognize when engagement becomes detrimental to our mental health. Taking a step back isn’t a sign of apathy or weakness; it’s an act of self-preservation and a strategic retreat, allowing us to recharge and return to our causes with renewed vigor and clarity.
Remember, engaging with the world doesn’t mean shouldering its burdens alone. We can contribute to change in small, meaningful ways without losing ourselves. The world’s problems, vast and complex as they are, require a collective effort. It’s okay to play your part without trying to carry the entire weight on your shoulders.
In an era where information is at our fingertips, discernment becomes critical. Not all news requires immediate action or worry. Learning to differentiate between what needs our attention and what can wait is a crucial skill. Ultimately, staying informed and engaged should not come at the cost of our peace of mind and mental health. The ‘airplane rule’ of self-care is not just wise; it’s essential. Engage, but also step back. Care, but also preserve. Advocate, but also rest. In doing so, you are taking care of yourself and ensuring that you can continue to contribute to the causes you care about sustainably and impactfully.
