I wanted to share what I wrote for one of my class assignment. The weekly discussion post assignment is to pick a “chapter” (any source; book chapter, journal article, news article, TED talk, movie, TV show, literally anything) that relates to Cyberpsychology. I’m copy and pasting my posting below because there has been so much discussion in my class about how bad social media is that even I had forgotten how essential it is to some people with disabilities. I don’t want anyone to respond with how bad social media can be on this post; I’ve had *literally* 7 weeks of discussing how bad it is in my class, how it warps your perception of reality and your identity(ies), is highly addicting, and makes us isolated and more depressed. That’s all true. Pretty sure we all know it at this point, even if you never heard of cyberpsychology before. But some of the reasons why social media is so bad is also the reason why it is so amazingly good for people with disabilities. Below is a summary of the source I picked for this week (Stuart Duncan’s TED talk about Autworld) and my reaction. I can’t seem to put a “keep reading” thing on, so sorry to people who don’t want to read it and have to scroll a long bit!
Quick edit: I feel absolute horrible, my brain read Stuart Duncan’s name as Steve (Honestly, it’s about Minecraft, I think reading his name as Steve is fairly understandable lol) -- I hope Tumblr saves this fix! Sorry, Stuart
How I use Minecraft to help kids with autism (link embedded) Word Count: 719 words
In Stuart Duncan’s TED talk, he tells us about how he created “Autcraft,” a Minecraft server for people with autism. Duncan himself is autistic, and he noticed that other people in the autism community (particularly young kids) were being severely bullied online. This is a very common occurrence, in real life and online, because people with autism behave differently than other kids without autism and are often mocked and criticized for their different behaviors. Some kids as young as six years old were being told to kill themselves on public Minecraft servers. Duncan created Autcraft as a private server and posted on his Facebook account that kids (and adults) with autism can email him and he will allow them in. Autcraft is an inclusive, compassionate, and positive world where kindness and helping behaviors are rewarded. While in other servers points and awards are given to people in competitions, in Autcraft, good behaviors are tracked and rewarded. This has led to real-world effects because the good behaviors modeled and observed by other players translate to autistic kids performing these behaviors in real life. Younger children learn spelling through watching how other people spell words correctly on their signs, and Duncan has reports from parents saying their nonverbal children have started verbally communicating (although mainly about Minecraft). Duncan emphasizes that the main reason why this world has become so successful and such an impactful positive environment for autistic people is because it is accommodating and safe. He tells a story about how one boy who he later found out was going blind would spam the chat with dash marks. The other players were getting upset with this and wanted him to be muted, but instead of punishing the behavior, Duncan and the admins figured out he was doing that so the chat would be visually separated so he could read it better. The admins created a code that all players can use to automatically separate each chat with dashes (or asterisks, whatever they choose), as well as highlights your username so you can identify when you are being talked about/to easier. The last point Duncan made was about being a person that autistic kids can feel safe around. By listening, being non-judgmental, and allowing autistic people to be themselves without imposing prejudice, suicidal autistic kids feel safe enough to come to Duncan and the other admins. He challenges everyone else to be that safe person kids (autistic or not) can come to. I haven’t heard of Autworld before. Apparently, it has been in the news, magazines, and other media and has been dubbed as “the best place on the internet.” After reading so many articles for this class about how the internet is a dangerous place and social media is addicting and we should decrease our usage of it, I wanted to find a positive source about social media/virtual worlds for this week’s chapter review. Online communities can mean so incredibly much for people with disabilities and marginalized groups. For me, social media and the internet is my primary way of socializing; I don’t enjoy in-person interactions and it isn’t because I’m a Gen Z addicted to the internet, though I am also a Gen Z addicted to the internet (but these are separate issues here). Many [neurotypical] people don’t understand and can never conceptualize how stressful, panic-inducing, and even painful live human interaction can be. To tie this TED talk and this topic to Turkle’s TED talk (Task #1 of this week): People are extremely judgmental and social media allows you to create an edited identity where people are willing to talk to you before automatically judging you as someone they don’t want to interact with. It does allow you to craft ideal messages, leaving out the quirks, pauses, and mistakes of real-life communication. But when those quirks are too quirky, the pauses are too long, and the mistakes are stutters, lisps, disability accents, grammatical mistakes that makes your speech virtually intelligible to anyone but close friends and family, texting and virtual worlds become a sanctuary. They become a place where you can connect with people who share the same difficulties and will allow you to be yourself. Or at least more of yourself can be expressed through your avatar than could ever be socially acceptable in person.
