Virtual Autism describes developmental delays where a child shows autism-like behaviors without a known medical cause, such as family history or physical conditions.

These may include not responding to their name, limited communication, and difficulty interacting with peers.

Learn more about developmental milestones here.

Learn more about behaviors commonly linked with autism here.

Virtual Autism is not present at birth. 

It develops in early childhood due to a lack of essential environmental inputs.

These inputs include verbal, physical, emotional, and social interactions with people and surroundings. 

Such interactions are vital for healthy sensory development and integration.

Learn more about sensory development and integration here.

As life gets busier, screens are increasingly used to occupy children, replacing meaningful interaction. 

The screen time is a one way interaction for the children where they are just watching something. They are not able to interact with the screen.

Screen time harms the neurological growth of children, especially in their early development years, in many critical ways

• Screen time takes away the crucial opportunity from children to interact with their surroundings and the real world.

• Owing to attractive nature of digital content (audio, animations, pictures, colours) children become addicted to screens and less interested in interacting with their surrounding environment.

• What children watch (especially cartoons, rhythms) on TV, they cannot easily connect that with the real world.

The more and more time children spend on screen, the lesser environmental inputs they receive. This leads to sensory development. And if not checked at the right time, leads to development delays; which are many times quiet similar to traits of children on Autism Spectrum.

Not exactly.

Lack of environmental inputs lead to developmental delays and autistic symptoms.

Screen time takes away the opportunities from the children where-in they can get the environmental inputs and make children less interested in social interactions.

This is where your journey actually starts.

Let's start from here.