Abstract
Background:
Autistic adults often report heightened bodily vulnerability in face-to-face interactions, shaped by factors such as social expectations and sensory demands. With the increasing centrality of online communication, it is important to understand how digital environments can shape embodied experiences and social participation for different autistic people.
Methods:
This qualitative study used phenomenological interviews with 11 autistic adults living in North America and Europe. We interviewed participants, all of whom were habituated users of online spaces, in their preferred modality (text, audio, or video). Thematic analysis, informed by phenomenological attention to embodiment, identified how participants described bodily attention, agency, and connection across online and offline settings.
Results:
Participants consistently reported offline interactions requiring extensive bodily monitoring, associated with feelings of scrutiny and exhaustion. Online environments, in contrast, often afforded greater bodily ease, enabling shifts in attention away from self-monitoring toward communication. Participants emphasized novel forms of agency afforded in certain online contexts, helpful in fostering a sense of control. They furthermore described online communication as variably limiting or enriching, but frequently as supporting authentic and comfortable forms of self-expression and connection.
Discussion:
The findings suggest that online spaces can provide distinctive forms of embodied relief and inclusion for some autistic adults, challenging assumptions that in-person interaction is inherently preferable or superior for everyone. Consideration of autistic embodiment can be crucial for understanding accessible, inclusive platforms and for rethinking normative expectations of communication in both online and offline settings.
Community Brief
Why is this an important issue?
Autistic adults often face bodily risks in face-to-face social situations. They often feel they must monitor how they appear, how they speak, and how they move. This can be very stressful and damaging. At the same time, more and more autistic people are using online spaces to connect with others. This study examines how online spaces can affect bodily feelings and how these spaces can make it easier to connect with others in ways that can feel more comfortable and authentic, specifically for a group of autistic adults who are relatively experienced and comfortable users of the internet.
What was the purpose of this study?
The study asked: how do autistic people experience their own bodies and social interactions differently when they are online compared with in-person? The study hears directly from this group of autistic adults about how these spaces compare with offline social spaces, and how these differences can matter in bodily ways for the participants.
What did the researchers do?
Researchers interviewed 11 autistic adults, recruited via an online outreach. The interviews were in-depth conversations online where participants could choose how they wanted to communicate (e.g., text, audio, video). The researchers asked how participants felt in different social situations and what online spaces offered that in-person life might not.
What were the results and conclusions of the study?
Three major themes emerged:
What is new or controversial about these findings?
This study shows that online spaces can support meaningful experiences of bodily comfort and human connection for some autistic persons. It also questions the idea that in-person communication is always the best or most real for everyone.
What are potential weaknesses in the study?
The study included only 11 participants. The participants were all relatively comfortable and experienced users of the internet. The study did not include perspectives from outside of North America and Europe. The study relied on interviews, which often involve less shared control between the researcher and those being interviewed. The results of the study and its scope should be considered within these contexts.
How will these findings help autistic adults now or in the future?
This research highlights ways online spaces might be taken seriously when planning support for some autistic people. Online spaces allow for social flexibility, options to step back, and different ways to express feelings all of which might, for some autistic internet users, serve as important sources for connection and well-being. For policymakers and service providers, this suggests that, for some, digital platforms can be both powerful tools for bodily respite and social inclusion, but also that these tools can pose their own bodily risks. The study encourages listening to autistic voices when creating and providing access to social spaces, both offline and online.
Introduction
Experiences of bodily vulnerability are a recurring feature of everyday social life for many autistic people. Autistic embodiment can involve distinct sensory and communicative styles,1,2 which frequently diverge from neurotypical interactional norms. Navigating social environments organized around these norms can come with risks of bodily stigmatization.3,4 A growing body of research links such risks to adverse mental health outcomes, particularly in relation to camouflaging and masking practices.5–7 From a phenomenological perspective, these dynamics are deeply embodied, shaping how autistic people experience their own bodies as scrutinized or at risk in face-to-face social encounters.8,9
Against this background, the increasing centrality of digital communication has taken on different forms of significance for many autistic adults. Over the past two decades, research has documented how autistic people often engage with online platforms not only as tools for information exchange but also as meaningful social environments in their own right.10,11 Many autistic persons participate in various forms of online social spaces, where interaction can often be modulated according to individual needs.12–14 Early work has noted that some autistic adults experience online communication as a comparatively comfortable medium, especially in relation to control over timing and interactional demands. 15 Online engagement has furthermore been associated with strong social ties, peer support, and identity affirmation.16,17 Yet, online environments also introduce distinct risks related to harassment and social saliency, as well as privacy concerns, underscoring that digital sociality is not by default uniformly enabling nor universally accessible. 13 Moreover, online social life has been associated with increased challenges in sustaining relationships over time for some autistic individuals. 18
Building on this broader turn toward online sociality, autistic people have been found to actively cultivate a wide range of online communities organized around shared experiences as well as forms of advocacy and mutual support.19,20 These include autism-specific forums and social media groups, as well as gaming communities and hobby-oriented platforms, where autistic participation can be structured around shared practices instead of, for example, explicit diagnostic identity.10,21 Such communities have been described as enabling connection through affinity rather than conformity, allowing autistic people to engage socially without having to foreground or continuously justify differences in communication or behavior.14,22,23 Research further indicates that these online environments can support peer connection and informal knowledge exchange, including around identity negotiation and the navigation of social expectations. 24 Participation in these communities is often shaped by shared interests or activities that can provide a structured basis for interaction and reduce the salience of normative social demands for some. 25
Autistic engagement with online communities is, notably, situated: supportive experiences are often contingent on elements such as platform design, moderation practices, community culture, and users’ familiarity with the norms governing interaction. 12 Online social spaces in this way often function as differentiated environments in which possibilities for belonging and for exclusion can coexist. While platforms such as Reddit, Facebook, Discord, and Twitter have thus been studied as sites of peer support and collective sense-making, researchers also note that they can be characterized by uneven interactional norms and varying degrees of conflict and exposure to hostility, including for autistic persons.26–28 Research drawing on social media platforms documents how autistic users may strategically limit online participation altogether in response to experiences of misunderstanding and invalidation, and, more broadly, that nonparticipation online among many autistic adults is common and understudied.28–30 Meta-analytic evidence points to a differentiated pattern in young autistic samples, with higher levels of problematic internet use alongside lower overall involvement in social media platforms, suggesting that “online engagement” is not monolithic, varying by platform type and use-pattern. 31 Relatedly, research on online peer and interest-based communities for autistic groups often reflects primarily the experiences of individuals who are already able and willing to engage in such spaces.11,12,17,32,33
Despite the expanding literature on autistic online participation, explicit attention to the embodied dimensions of such online sociality remains comparatively limited, although a growing strand of research has begun to explore how digital environments may come to matter as sites of embodied reorientation for some autistic individuals.25,34 Building on broader scholarship that emphasizes how embodied demands shape autistic lived experience, 35 recent work has extended similar insights into digital contexts by examining the bodily affordances of online socializing. Emerging scholarship points to the internet’s capacity to reconfigure embodied social experience for some autistic people, affording alternative modes of presence and interaction that may be less attainable offline.25,36 Recent research has examined how autistic users of Twitter articulate and negotiate motor differences within online discourse. 37 Relatedly, ethnographic research on Minecraft servers used by autistic youth has explored how online game environments can facilitate social participation and provide modified forms of embodied experience and self-regulation for some autistic players.25,38 Furthermore, online advocacy and peer spaces have been explored as neuro-shared environments, helping to clarify why some digital places can feel especially accommodating of some autistic bodies, and stressing the importance of neuro-inclusive spaces both offline and online.36,39 In this regard, neurotypical design norms often continue to create barriers to participation for autistic people, underscoring the need for more inclusive and neuro-aware approaches to online environments. 12
Taken together, these bodies of work tend to foreground communication outcomes, psychosocial effects, or questions of accessibility and inclusion, while attending less consistently and directly to autistic individuals’ lived bodily experiences as an analytic focus. Drawing on research linking autistic sociality to sensory and interactional demands1,2,8,9,40 and extending emerging work on the embodied affordances of digital environments,41–48 this study adopts a phenomenological approach to investigate embodied perspectives on online sociality for 11 autistic persons, all habituated users of different online spaces. On methodological grounds, the study does not aim to capture an embodied account of autistic online engagement in general, including the perspectives of those who might avoid or be excluded from online social spaces, and whose experiences may well diverge from those of the participants (see the Limitations section). Instead, in keeping with phenomenological approaches that aim for analytic depth instead of broader representativeness,49–51 the study offers situated insights into online sociality among a group of purposefully sampled autistic adults who are already active and relatively comfortable with different online social spaces.
Methods
Below follows a breakdown of the study’s design presented in a structured overview following recent calls for standardized qualitative reporting. 52
The data analyzed for the purposes of this study were generated through semistructured, phenomenological interviews with autistic persons,49–51 conducted by the first author. In line with recent calls for autism researchers to self-educate through early engagement with autistic culture and literature, the first author spent 6 months before any data collection familiarizing himself with autistic media, including autobiographies and publicly accessible online spaces. This preliminary familiarization was undertaken for educational and sensitizing purposes, and to strengthen awareness of researcher positionality. No private or membership-restricted communities were accessed, no individual-level information was collected, and no material from this phase was retained or analyzed as research data. The online spaces primarily included open social media platforms, such as hashtags on Twitter, through which autistic (and non-autistic) users engage in diverse public knowledge exchange and discussions. The author also joined openly accessible discussion groups, primarily of an educational and political nature. In the latter contexts, the first author informed organizers of his position as a university researcher. All researcher profiles and usernames across sites online clearly indicated institutional affiliation.
Analytic orientation
The analytic process was informed by existing research emphasizing embodiment as central to autistic social experience,1,2,4,53 attending especially to participants’ descriptions of bodily regulation and visibility across social contexts. Research emphasizes that autistic persons often describe social interaction as involving navigation of others’ expectations as well as managing the presentation and experience of their own bodies.3,5,9 The coding and thematic development in this regard remained attuned to moments where embodiment shaped how social connection was described, framing online platforms as sites that afford different bodily relationships to interaction.45,54–56
Participants
Participants were purposefully recruited to enable in-depth examination of autistic adults’ experiences of online sociality in contexts where digital interaction was already familiar and sustained (see the Limitations section). Except for two participants (“Harry” and “Olaf”), who were recruited via a participant network from an earlier research project managed by the first author, participant recruitment occurred through two rounds of online outreach on subreddits (a type of forum associated with the social platform Reddit) for autistic individuals. Rather than serving as a general sampling pool, the subreddits used for recruitment functioned as communities of practice centered on shared online experiences, aligning with the study’s focus. Permission to post the call on the relevant subreddits was in both instances produced by relevant administrators (admins) 6 months before the project commenced, and the days leading up to the call. The administrators ended up serving as virtual gatekeepers and helped assure members of the subreddits of the project’s legitimacy and the researchers’ trustworthiness. Any interested party received a link leading to detailed information on the overall research project, including their rights, before signing any consent form. The first author made sure to address any inquiries raised, either privately or on the forums in response to the open call. Ethics approval was obtained from the College of Social Sciences and International Studies Research Ethics Committee, University of Exeter, before any recruitment and data collection.
In total, 11 participants were recruited. The gender balance was relatively even, with six participants identifying as he/him and five as she/her. While self-diagnosed participants were permitted to participate in the project, every participant described having received an autism diagnosis by a medical professional. All participants received pseudonyms to protect their identity. All lived in North America or Europe at the time of the interviews (see the Limitations section).
After consenting to participate, each participant could opt for an online interview format they preferred (the options being text-based, audio-based, or audio/video-based). The aim was to provide a safe and open interview setting, rather than rely upon an interview context or style the participants might find less accessible and safe.57,58 The interviews varied in length, ranging from 49 minutes to 113 minutes, with most interviews lasting around 80 minutes. Throughout the interview process, checkups were made to gauge whether the interview duration exceeded the participants’ comfort levels.
All participants were interviewed using the same semistructured guide, with the interview strategy being generally open-ended and explorative. All participants were sent the interview guide ahead of the interviews to increase transparency and to allow each participant time to reflect on their own experiences before the interviews. 59 The interview guide was deliberately designed in a nonformalized and accessible manner.
Trustworthiness
Trustworthiness in phenomenological interviews is strengthened by the ability of the interviewer to properly grasp, represent, and subsequently analyze the intended meaning and context of the participants’ descriptions in an emic way (p. 201).60,61 The two-sided risk of empathy breakdowns and social mismatches between autistic and non-autistic interlocutors has been emphasized by autism researchers.40,62–64 While the first author is registered for a forthcoming autism assessment, a clinical diagnosis has not to date been established. The risk of so-called double-empathy problems is no less material in the context of interview-focused qualitative research, which, while relational, is less participatory in design.65,66 In addition, the risk of communication mismatches can be further augmented by discrepancies in power between the interviewer and participant in interview settings.
In this context, the study is characterized by its limited degree of participatory design, and the absence of autistic coinvestigators constitutes a methodological limitation (see the Limitations section). To mitigate risks of epistemic injustice67–71 and enhance trustworthiness, the design incorporated measures already described above, including the preliminary familiarization phase, responsiveness to participant inquiries, options for preferred interview modality, distribution of the interview guide to ensure transparency, and a deliberately accessible interview format. Furthermore, to strengthen the emic grasp of and engagement with the participants’ meanings before further analysis, the first author would inquire in an open manner throughout the interviews as to whether participant descriptions had been understood correctly, and the participants were allowed as much time as they needed to answer as well as to elaborate on previous answers. This was complemented by text-based, clarificatory postinterview outreaches to the participants over email. Here, participants were also sent the full transcript of the interview and retained full rights to modify, rescind, or comment on their answers and descriptions after the interviews. Preliminary results of the analysis were presented to and reviewed by autistic peers, including autistic researchers at the authors’ university.
Transcription
The first author transcribed the interviews verbatim, capturing diction, response tokens, grammar, and internet-specific slang, while omitting pronunciations and regional accents. 72 All interviews were transcribed in their entirety.
Data analysis
Following the initial transcription, analysis of the participants’ descriptions proceeded in two phases. Using NVivo 15, an initial phase of coding first aimed at identifying central categories as described and emphasized by the participants themselves (p. 201).60,61 This early analytic phase was largely iterative and inductive, appraising the interview material repeatedly until internal consistency emerged in relation to the initial, identified categories (p. 7).73,74 Categories identified were “social (mis)understanding,” “feeling (un)safe,” “feeling (un)seen,” “overwhelm,” “convenience,” “control,” “normativity,” and “authenticity.” From these categories, three overall themes were identified, reflecting salient, bodily dimensions of offline and online socializing emphasized by the participants: (i) attention, (ii) agency, and (iii) connection. The first author was responsible for the initial coding and the early analytic phase. Both the first and second authors contributed to the identification of the study’s analytical scope and the later development of the overall themes.
The ambition of the data analysis was not to account in an essentialist manner for autistic online sociality, but to offer a “composite, subjective voice,” 75 highlighting overarching perspectives and individual nuances for the specific group of participants (see the Limitations section).
Results
Participants described a wide range of online social spaces, including gaming platforms, Discord, WhatsApp group chats, and social media. Across these settings, they engaged in diverse communities (interest-based, general social, and autism-focused support) and interacted with varied communication partners (mostly autistic, mixed groups, or broader public contexts). This heterogeneity underscores the study’s exploratory design: phenomenological themes emerged across different forms of online engagement rather than a single model of sociality.
Below follow the results of the analysis of the participants’ descriptions structured around the themes identified.
Attention
A recurring feature of the participants’ descriptions pertains to the different degrees and methods of attention, especially bodily monitoring, the participants experience social situations demanding offline and online. “Attention” is meant to capture the broadly shifting orientations through which participants describe monitoring themselves and others, and the different ways offline and online spaces restrict or open up awareness either inward, including toward self and corporeality, or outward, toward the social space and others.
During the interviews, the participants emphasize how engaging with others offline can necessitate different variations of explicit monitoring. The participants connect this monitoring to how they present and use their bodies and their voices. Rose explains:
I’m always thinking about my posture. Like, you know, when you’re in the real world, you… it’s just very much how you portray yourself… You know, it’s very much how you look and how you present and how you speak.
A principal reason for this monitoring repeatedly emphasized by the participants is a continuous worry about being misperceived or misunderstood by others. Beatrice describes a constant need during in-person interactions of checking boxes on a hundred different things, such as assuring she is making the right face, using the right tone of voice and avoiding mirroring conversational partners’ accents. Nova describes the need to monitor her own body in social situations as a constant battle of assuring that the things she wants to say are understood as important, and Leonard emphasizes a persistent sense of feeling scrutinized in face-to-face interactions.
Participants describe offline social contexts as overwhelming, often driving their attention toward their body as a socially scrutinized object to be micromanaged in ways that feel disruptive, exhausting, and alienating. The body in offline contexts is described as something to be supervised or managed to match their behavior with social expectations or pressures, to make sure that one’s intended meaning is conveyed according to communicative norms, and to avoid social overstimulation or overwhelm. Notably, the chronic strain of this prolonged effort may inscribe itself in the body as a form of traumatic memory, forged from the cumulative burden of suppressing one’s natural movements and expressions over extended periods.6,76,77
Risks of bodily thematization can also characterize online sociality according to the participants. Leonard and Beatrice stress how online technologies such as instances of videoconferencing can still manage to adversely foreground their sense of body. However, among the various online social settings used and described by the participants, many are lauded for their ability to ease feelings of bodily thematization. Olaf explains that online he can finally sit however he wants and not think about his breath and voice usage. Leonard describes the need to monitor his body withdrawing when online, allowing for a felt sense of outward attention to emerge. He explains that, when online I can just be, and I can just… I can just talk (Leonard’s emphasis).
Beatrice stresses the potential of online spaces to facilitate a less thematized sense of body and, consequently, a preferable style of being:
I’m not constantly self-monitoring… especially my body. You know it’s a great place for my body to just sort of disappear and I think… honestly, if I could, like, that would be my ideal state of being in real life, like, just get rid of it, so I don’t have to think about being attached to my body.
Online environments are described as spaces where participants could find respite from feeling observed or judged, and where their attention was more freely able to shift away from bodily monitoring and toward the social context itself. Beatrice’s appreciation of her body disappearing online should not be read as an embrace of bodily privation, that is, a bodily respite online attributed to an experienced disembodiment. Rather than lauding a diminishment to her sense of embodiment, Beatrice herself stresses that it is the energy cost of self-monitoring that is significantly lower online, tying this to her feeling freed from a persistent need to engage in simultaneous, multimodal, bodily monitoring. Within the broader spectrum of participant descriptions, it is an array of offline social settings especially that emerge as undermining participants’ sense of bodily integrity. Phenomenologically, experiences of bodily withdrawal, such as described by Beatrice, suggest a more sustainable sense of bodily transparency online, not of bodily privation. That is, an intersubjective, embodied ease and comfort experienced as necessary for the outward, relational orientation otherwise often compromised offline.78,79
Beatrice’s reflections also illustrate how this possibility of bodily ease can be configured differently across online modalities. In video calls, she describes a continued need to monitor her appearance and tonality, explaining that such platforms often reproduce the perceived vigilance of face-to-face encounters. While she lauds being able to arrange her background and environment more freely in video chats than offline, she still describes video communication as sustaining pressures for coordination. By contrast, in text-based exchanges, she describes a more profound relief, with expression unfolding sequentially and at her own pace, rather than through the simultaneous adjustment of physical comportment in real time with others. 80 Beyond reducing efforts of self-monitoring, this bodily reconfiguration is described as altering the very way interaction takes shape, affording a less taxing form of coordinated engagement.2,8
While certain online forms of sociality are emphasized precisely for their ability to invoke bodily transparency, the picture of online sociality as attentional reconfiguration is complex. In part, because of their persistence and accessibility, Leonard notes, many forms of online sociality come with risks of vulnerability and of feeling too seen. He describes this as a kind of hypervisibility, explaining that professional emails and work-related social media requiring one to put on a professional persona can feel massively like masking. The novel social modalities of online spaces, as described by the participants, speak to online spaces as variously able to support experiences of bodily transparency but also, in some cases, to intensify perceived visibility, depending on the interactional and social configuration of the modality. These shifting experiences of visibility are central to how participants describe possibilities online for selective control and withdrawal, which can simultaneously give rise to new forms of exposure and constraint.
Agency
Whereas navigation from one social space to another in offline contexts typically involves bodily transportation through a range of transitional and often unpredictable environments, online spaces offer the possibility of more immediate and controlled shifts in locality. For participants, this reduction of exposure to unpredictable social and bodily encounters was meaningful, with the relative seamlessness of moving between online spaces being associated by the participants with feelings of agency and autonomy. As Leonard explains:
I think for me there are less barriers, because I know the process and it’s predictable. It’s predictable, that, you know, touchwood, it’s predictable that “I turn on my computer” and then you know, “type my password” and then, “oh look, there’s my password manager,” all of the things that I need are pinned to the taskbar, I know what I’m doing today.
This predictability and environmental control stood in contrast to the uncertainties of physical movement and social exposure offline. Leonard emphasizes that within this more predictable, familiar environment, surprises are still a part of everyday life. The distinguishing feature of online social spaces for Leonard is not the elimination of surprises, but the regaining of control over the kinds of surprises he is exposed to every day; a kind of soft predictability in response to the uncertainty and risk that can characterize offline, social navigation.
The participants also laud online spaces for their novel opportunities for opting out of social situations, which participants tie to a minimization of feeling bodily hindered or ensnared that otherwise can characterize offline sociality. I can still feel bad, but I can always log off, Otto notes. Opting out as a kind of agency is reflected in the participants’ increased freedom to remove not only themselves but also others, with Otto and Mike both stressing the importance of being able to block people online (and lamenting the unavailability of blocking people offline at times). Whereas online, communication can often be more freely canceled, offline there is no way out, Nova notes. Online spaces are relatedly described by Harry and Olaf as providing a possible respite or safe space from overwhelming offline social situations.
The distressful and persistent sense of there being “no way out” offline is echoed by several of the participants. Rose, who spends much of her time in the massively multiplayer online roleplaying game (MMORPG), Elder Scrolls Online, observes:
In real life, everything feels so different. When I go to Walmart, for example, I try not to engage with people, but it never fails-strangers always strike up a conversation with me and I feel obligated to respond, so I always do. The longer the conversation continues, the more awkward I feel. However, I continue to participate because it’s almost an unspoken societal expectation. In [Elder Scrolls Online], you can simply “flee” from other players before they engage with you (my character has earned MAX SPEED for this very purpose) if I’m not in the mood to engage.
In offline contexts, Rose’s perceived and mounting sense of unease is tied to a feeling of being bodily tethered or immobilized, unable to withdraw from the situation. This feeling, as she (humorously) notes, stands in stark contrast to the opportunities afforded online, where she is literally able to dash away (at maximum speed) absent worries of feeling tethered or immobilized. Rose further contextualizes this perceived freedom with a lack of solidity or bodily resistance of other players in Elder Scrolls Online. In real life, people are solid, Rose explains, but in Elder Scrolls Online, she is free to run through players’ avatars without feeling hindered, and without expectations of initiating conversations.
Several participants stress the significance of being able to navigate online social spaces without an expectation to actively engage. Focusing on social media, Beatrice describes the ability to regulate her degree of presence as being an “internet wallflower,” allowing her to remain present without pressure or judgment. Nova similarly emphasizes the increased control over sensory and social flow online, enabling her to decide how many different things I want to face at once, which reduces the need to adapt her behavior and supports more manageable forms of communication. Rose connects options such as logging out, disengaging, making her avatar invis [invisible] or setting her in-game status to offline, to a broader sense of playful agency, even within highly populated online environments.
The increased opportunities for opting out online can, however, still carry risks of thematization. One example raised concerns the online voice communication software, Discord, frequently used by several participants. The software allows users to “mute” others and “deafen” themselves, blocking audio from other participants. While offering new forms of agency over one’s social soundscape, such status changes can be visible to anyone in the shared Discord space when they happen, and changing one’s status in this way can consequently feel very socially apparent. Harry explains:
[Opting out] can be rather difficult in a Discord conversation, right? Then I need to deafen myself, and that is a very obvious thing. Or… it is obvious in a different way than it is in real life.
While online social spaces are lauded by the participants for their novel forms of control over how and how much one engages socially, some of these novel options for control can also, as Harry notes, conversely reestablish feelings of visibility and vulnerability.
Participants’ descriptions underscore the significance of the qualitative distinctiveness of interactions afforded in digital environments. Practices such as logging off or blocking are highlighted because they reconfigure the dynamics of participation itself, altering how coordination with others becomes possible. 81 In this regard, these agential reconfigurations are often tied by participants to novel forms of vulnerability online. Harry’s account of deafening himself on Discord illustrates how digital affordances that enable control can simultaneously produce new forms of exposure. Similarly, focusing on the “typing” indicator on messaging platforms, Annie describes the feature as especially helpful for gauging others’ responsiveness, yet also as making her feel conspicuously visible and self-conscious when composing her own replies. Beatrice, while tying online interactions to a sense of bodily comfort and safety, nevertheless notes that, owing to its often-anonymous nature, in reality the internet is not much less terrifying-it’s just terrifying in different ways. Overall, participants’ accounts point to agential affordances online as fluid and often ambivalent; the same affordances able to facilitate feelings of autonomy and bodily relief can, in different ways, also engender renewed experiences of exposure and constraint. These qualitatively different dynamics of control and visibility afforded online also inform how participants describe digital platforms’ capacity to connect them with others.
Connection
The final theme concerns human connection, especially as it relates to the participants’ perceived opportunities for intersubjective expressivity, communication, and perceived authenticity: of feeling understood and of understanding others.
Of central relevance in participants’ accounts is the availability and normalization of a wider array of ways to connect with others online beyond offline socio-corporeal standards of communication, such as proximal face-to-face conversations. Online spaces afford the participants novel ways of reaching out; of socializing, including through avatars, voice chat programs, and the more normalized, text-based forms of communication that characterize online life.
For some of the participants, the movement online away from offline body language is seen as an expressive impoverishment, or a lessening of social nuance. Focusing specifically on the limits of text-based communication, Peter describes texting online as a less transparent, reliable, and nuanced form of communication. A similar concern is emphasized by Annie, who describes personal difficulties working out the tone and general vibe in text-based communication. Relatedly, Leonard expresses frustrations with a felt pressure to proofread when texting online, and the limited opportunities for dispelling misunderstandings in real time via text. Similar limitations are tied to online avatars, with Rose describing them as expressively impoverished:
I can’t read their body language. I can’t… I can’t hear their tone of voice. I can’t… . I have no clue that they have other stuff going on.
The novel communication formats that tend to characterize online socializing are described by several of the participants as expressively impoverished forms of socializing, often with reference to the absence of offline body language. Nevertheless, for Rose, the absence of offline, bodily expressivity in her video game space is also lauded precisely for its difference from offline, interbodily norms or expectations—a freedom, she notes, that is seldomly offered her in offline social spaces.
On other occasions, participants depart from the idea of online forms of communication as socially impoverished. In some contexts, online spaces are emphasized for their perceived increases in social salience and fluidity. For Rose and Annie, the different temporal expectations offered in online communication are lauded, explaining their appreciation of text-based communication for its specific conversational pacing and the time for reflection the written medium provides. Overall, temporality emerges as a significant aspect of connecting with others online. As already noted, text communication constitutes a focal point in many interviews due to its distinctive rhythms and contours of interaction. Reflecting the perceived richness and complexity of online sociality and the affordances different platforms and spaces present, participants at once lament slower, asynchronous exchanges for prolonging uncertainty or intensifying self-monitoring, while also lauding these same rhythms for affording time to reflect and edit without the bodily pressure of immediate response. Yet, as touched upon above, even these slower forms of interaction can reproduce a sense of visibility when features such as typing indicators make ongoing responses perceptible to others.
Participants frequently link online, particularly text-based, communication to a broader sense of ease and expressive openness, with online writing being described as allowing for more precise and comfortable expression than face-to-face interaction. Nova notes that writing enables her to express things she can barely speak out loud, even though she finds it difficult to explain why speaking feels harder, connecting it to elements of shame as well as concern for her interlocutor’s feelings.
Participants emphasize that writing allows emotional nuance to be conveyed in ways that can feel more manageable and intelligible. Echoing Beatrice’s picture of texting, Nova highlights how emojis and punctuation communicate affective detail and support her sense of understanding others’ feelings. Casper similarly contrasts the effort required to express emotion in person, which often involves masking, with the relative freedom of texting, where excitement or frustration can be conveyed more directly through written emphasis:
I think at Christmas as a kid my mom would ask me if I was disappointed with things I got because I didn’t always express excitement how others did, I would smile or say something is really cool but I would be relatively contained about it, so I’d promise/reassure [her] I was really happy about the gifts. Whereas over text, I can use caps lock or emojis and punctuation to fully express any sort of excitement or positive emotions.
Where Casper emphasizes the expressive capabilities of online texting, Olaf lauds the ability of online text-based communication to facilitate more authentic forms of human connection:
Well, if I go all in on getting to know somebody online and they also feel more comfortable online, they are generally going to express more… more true feelings through text rather than if they were sitting across.
Several participants tie feelings of connection and authenticity to online spaces’ novel behavioral norms. Rose’s above-described example of being able to run away from other players in her online game without it being perceived in the same way as inappropriate, and without the same felt sense of bodily tethering or immobilization, points to this normative modification online. Peter provides another example, describing the perceived importance of online spaces’ distancing from societal norms of behavior, here with reference to Discord:
In regard to social norms being different on Discord as opposed to in person, it is extremely important that we are all allowed to “be ourselves” without fear of being judged. My friends and I do quirky things such as making silly noises, cracking jokes, and basically letting our guard down. To me, this is like “unmasking”-where I don’t need to maintain that unspoken level of “decorum” that society demands consistently. It’s refreshing to just be myself, and I know my friends feel that way too because they have been joining in on our online calls for more than ten years.
While the attributed meaning of social norms varies between the participants, several participants laud the perceived sense of being partially uprooted online from offline interactional expectations and dynamics. This uprooting is explicitly tied to feelings of unmasking, and feelings of acceptance and inclusion, with the freedom to unmask emerging as mitigation of some of the negative psychological effects and masking-related trauma discussed previously.
Across participants’ accounts, their descriptions often converge on the internet as socially valuable because it expands the range of possibilities for human interaction, with authenticity appearing as a highly contextual phenomenon herein. Indeed, many online social spaces are lauded precisely for providing a meaningful distance from offline, embodied norms of interaction, norms that participants frequently describe as constraining their opportunities for human connection. Yet, online sociality by itself does not, on the participants’ accounts, innately afford authenticity by means of being digital. Feelings of authenticity online are described as relational and interactional, with participants’ accounts pointing to a notable disparity in where and how perceived authenticity can emerge online. That is to say, for the participants, experiences of authenticity and connection online are situated within the distinctive, embodied reconfigurations of interaction that different online environments afford.2,81,82
Discussion
The themes identified reflect experiential patterns of the participant sample, namely autistic adults who are habituated and active users of online social spaces, and they should consequently be read as situated rather than population-level accounts. Within this scope, the themes specify experiential dimensions through which online sociality can become accommodating or constraining for some autistic adults. Together, the results extend previous research and offer directions for future work.
In alignment with previous findings on autistic sensory sensitivities and social fatigue,77,83–85 participants described offline social spaces as often socially and sensorily overwhelming, underscoring the affective weight of inhabiting offline social environments, especially those governed by neurotypical norms. 9 In these contexts, the ongoing pressure to regulate social embodiment was experienced as carrying profound personal consequences. Participants highlighted a persistent need to monitor bodily expression and behavior, further supporting recent phenomenological research detailing the effortful and detrimental nature of autistic camouflaging and masking.5,7,86
What emerged in the interviews was that, for the participants, moving online could transform this dynamic: online spaces were often valued as environments where the risk of being misread or invalidated was less acute. Extending research on autistic people’s digital engagement and its possible psychosocial benefits among some autistic children, adolescents, and adults,87,88 participants frequently described online spaces as a potentially alleviating factor of bodily thematization, enabling shifts in attention outward, toward the social interaction itself, rather than inward, toward a body described as policed by social norms. For several participants, digital environments consequently functioned as a kind of shelter from the norm; as places where social presence could be more flexibly negotiated without the same intensity of bodily scrutiny.
Agency emerged as another theme. Participants described online environments as often, but not always, more navigable and amenable to control than offline social contexts. Participants described how the availability of online forms of control asynchronously contributed to a felt sense of autonomy and emotional regulation, extending research showing online spaces as relevant in offering safe environments for some autistic people to assert boundaries and explore identity.10,21,89 Furthermore, with regard to avatarial-based forms of sociality, such as video games, several participants lauded the shift away from experiences of bodily risk and immobility in social situations offline, to experiences of bodily mobility and freedom in these online social situations.
The findings invite reflection on dominant assumptions about what broadly constitutes suitable or ideal communication, including in neurodiverse contexts. Participants described authenticity and social salience emerging less through physical proximity or neurotypical body language, compared with through text, emojis, punctuation, and avatar-based navigation. These findings echo a growing body of research arguing for a reconceptualization of communicative norms within autism studies, including online,90–95 aligning with broader efforts in perceptions of online interaction as a valid and potentially preferred mode of relating for some.
Within enactive and embodied frameworks,41,42,96–98 participants’ accounts speak to online spaces as affording reconfigured modalities of bodily presence for some autistic users, shifting experiences of visibility and expressivity in ways that can relieve pressures associated with neurotypical interactional norms offline, while also giving rise to new risks and constraints. The results in this regard add nuance to critiques of online spaces as inherently disembodying or socially impoverished44,99,100—critiques that risk overlooking the specific contexts of bodily vulnerability. Based on the participants’ descriptions, digital spaces can provide socio-communicative affordances that, for some, might foster embodied comfort and authenticity, echoing calls for more flexible, inclusive understandings of communication in autism research.3,101,102
While general themes did emerge during data analysis, at a more granular level, participants’ descriptions of online sociality reflected a topography characterized by individual perceptions and preferences. For example, the reduced availability of (neurotypical) embodied cues in some forms of online communication—especially in text-based formats—was for some participants described as an important loss of nuance and emotional clarity, and for others as an alleviating factor. While some participants welcomed the more asynchronous tempo of online texting, others emphasized the decreased affordances available for addressing misunderstandings in real time, as well as the increased prevalence of irony and sarcasm in online, written communication as points of frustration. 103 Taken together, the participants’ accounts illustrate a diversity of communicative preferences as well as the situational relevance of different interactional modes within online contexts.2,101
Overall, the study adds nuance to current sociotechnical discussions, particularly in neurodiverse contexts. As online spaces continue to evolve, questions of accessibility and inclusivity remain pressing, and may be especially consequential for groups of autistic people who might rely on such environments for social participation.30,84,104,105 The findings highlight the need to recognize online spaces as potentially vital but contextual sites of social participation for some autistic people, and to include autistic perspectives when considering their accessibility. At the same time, they point to the potential value of designing digital technologies that support different, neurodivergent embodiments instead of indiscriminately reproducing neurotypical social norms. 12 In this regard, for the participants, online spaces often notably derived much of their value from their divergence or resistance to normative hierarchies of embodiment and communication. Overall, the study underscores the urgency of attending to autistic perspectives as heterogeneous and context-dependent resources when creating bodily inclusive social spaces, offline and online.
Limitations
This study has several limitations. First, it is shaped by researcher positionality, which informed both the construction of the interview guide and the analysis of data. Specifically, the absence of autistic coinvestigators in the study design and the limited degree of participatory involvement remain methodological shortcomings. Second, the interviews did not address structural barriers (e.g., digital access) or intersectional identities (e.g., gender, race, class) that may also shape online participation. Similarly, the study focuses exclusively on individuals living in North America and Europe. These omissions constrain the breadth of perspectives represented in the data. Third, this study examines the experiences of autistic adults who were already embedded in online social environments and who experience digital interaction as sufficiently accessible to sustain regular participation. The findings therefore only address the embodied experiences of a delimited group for whom online interaction is already relatively viable. This boundary is analytically central to the study and places clear limits on the transferability of the findings, which should be understood as explorative insights into a subset of experiences and not as claims about the autistic community as a whole.
Footnotes
Author Disclosure Statement
No competing financial interests exist.
Funding Information
The work was supported by Carlsbergfondet’s Internationalisation Fellowship (grant number: CF21 0287).
Authorship Confirmation Statement
The first author was responsible for collecting the data and led the early analytical stages. Both the authors contributed to refining the analytic framework and drafting the article. Both the authors also participated in revising and editing the text. All the authors reviewed and approved the final version of the article before submission. The authors confirm that all individuals listed as authors meet the criteria for authorship, and that no others meeting those criteria have been omitted.