Virtual autism - Rau's IAS

What is virtual autism?

Virtual autism is a phrase formulated in 2018 by Marius Teodor Zamfir, a Romanian psychologist. He found that children, 0-3 years, who stared at screens for over 4 hours a day, had “sensory-motor and socio-affective deprivation”.

These activated “behaviours and elements are similar to those found in children diagnosed with ASD [autism spectrum disorder]”.
Autism is a pervasive development disorder, meaning it affects all areas of early childhood development, including speech, sociability, play, and skill development.
The nervous system is not ready for screens at an early stage of life.
A parent or sibling blowing bubbles and a child reaching out to touch them is not the same as the simulated video game on a tablet.
Children at this age learn a variety of skills as they discover their bodies, simple objects, and the voices of family members.
By using screens as a substitute for self-soothing or as a distraction, we are destroying five levels of learning, These include
- Interoception (awareness of body cues),
- Sensory learning that is not restricted to the visual,
- Muscle memory to enables a lower-level skill to progress into a higher-level skill,
- Emotional learning, and other forms of learning (including school work, regulation, and problem-solving).
For a child who has been spending long hours in front of screens and is showing signs of uneven development, there is a combination of ways of reversing the prognosis.

Treatment of virtual autism is to be structured by professionals (child psychologists and occupational therapists), but not restricted to the therapist’s office.
It is about changing the home environment to be more stimulating — letting babies be idle and not having to engage them all the time it can be treated through using various therapies like-
- Play therapy
- Psychomotor stimulation therapy to language stimulation
- Cognitive behaviour therapies.