Screens are infrastructure. For neurodivergent and disabled people, they are assistive devices, regulation tools, community spaces, and lifelines. They are how many of us survive hostile systems and find our way to belonging.
Gaming is where it shows most clearly. The “screen time” panic gets it backwards. When Autistic young people play, they are not wasting time. They are building agency, practicing self-regulation, developing friendships, and escaping the relentless demands of a world that wasn’t built for them. Gaming is the solution they found. Banning it removes a coping strategy without addressing what required coping in the first place.
Monotropism shapes how many of us game. Deep immersion is not dysfunction — it’s how Autistic cognition works at its best. Flow states in games are real and meaningful. They deserve understanding, not management.
Accessibility is not a feature. For disabled gamers, it is the difference between being inside the community and being locked outside it. When games get it right, we’re not “disabled gamers” anymore. We’re just gamers.
This page gathers research, testimony, and resources on screens, gaming, and neurodivergent and disabled life: why it matters, what Autistic people say about it, how the screen fits monotropic attention, how accessibility shapes our experience, and what game design can teach us about learning.
…gaming is actually an incredibly important tool for a lot of autistic people.
Why Gaming Is Actually Good for Autistic Children
Video games have saved my life.
GAConf 2018: A Fraught Love Letter to the Games Industry
Table of Contents
- Reframing Screens
- Beyond Screen Time: What the Screen Is For
- Why gaming is actually GOOD for autistic children
- Design for Change: What Teachers Can Learn from Video Games
- I can actually do it without any help or someone watching over me all the time and giving me constant instruction
- Online gaming engagement
- Intervention
- Being your own boss: a sense of agency and belonging
- A chance to make the choices
- Having the option to be powerful
- Being part of the group
- Learning how to switch off: regulating emotions through gaming and escapism
- A need for understanding: dispositional diversity and parental conflict
- Getting into the flow: Balancing monotropic focus with self-care
- The importance of autonomy
- Self-regulation
- Social opportunities
- Dispositional diversity and parental conflict
- Monotropism and flow states
- Games Before Bed
- The Naturally Monotropic Medium: Why the Screen Fits
- Hard Mode is My Norm: Gaming Accessibility and Community
Reframing Screens
Screens are not the enemy. For many neurodivergent and disabled people, they are the primary means of learning, connecting, and regulating. The “screen time” panic tells us more about deficit thinking than about harm.
Findings showed that screen time was significantly associated with anxiety and depression in neurotypical youth; conversely, screen time was not significantly associated with anxiety and depression in autistic youth.
Results indicate that autistic children may have a different relationship with electronic screen media than neurotypical children. Whereas neurotypical youth find electronic screen media to be a source of social stress and comparison, autistic youth may not experience screen time as stress-inducing. Supporters (e.g., parents and clinicians) of autistic youth should consider whether the autistic child experiences screen time as promotive, reductive, or neither for their mental health before establishing screen time limits.
The problem was never the screens.
The screen time panic follows a pattern. Every decade, education identifies a villain — low standards, unaccountable teachers, the curriculum, now the screen — wages war on it, and moves on without addressing the underlying conditions. The villain changes. The conditions don’t.
Adopt without thinking, panic, remove without thinking.
Andrew Marcinek, via A.J. Juliani
The research is more specific than the panic suggests. The negative correlations between device use and test scores were measured for leisure use at school specifically — not purposeful learning. When screen use is purposeful, research finds no significant negative association with academic outcomes. Technology interventions designed for students with learning differences show effect sizes of +0.61. The problem isn’t technology. It’s purposeless technology.
I see children who don’t feel competent anywhere else in their lives, feeling good about themselves when they play video games. I ask them about their gaming and they come alive. I download the games myself and we chat about strategy. They often can’t believe an adult is interested.
I meet young people who can regulate their emotions with their tablet, taking some time out in their day to put on headphones and sink into their safe zone, meaning that they can carry on afterwards. It’s such a useful and portable way to take some time out. All that’s necessary is for the adults to understand why it’s important, and to help them find a space to do so.
I do also see young people whose lives are difficult, and they use gaming to avoid their thoughts and feelings. Their parents worry & start to put in bans. The thing is, the gaming is the solution they’ve found, not the cause. Bans won’t solve that, and they can drive wedges between parents and children. It’s the difficult life we need to change, and one way to start is to nurture the relationships with their parents, and to build on the things which are good.
I meet many parents who say they have no idea what their children do on their devices, that ‘screen time’ is time for them to get on with other tasks. They treat screens in quite a different way to their children’s other passions. They don’t see it as worthy of their time.
Some of them will say they refuse to pay for games, meaning their children are only able to play ‘free’ games which are advert-heavy and whose game play is usually skewed towards having to buy gems or crystals. This means young people are stuck playing games which are designed to make them spend money, whilst not being able to spend money. A situation designed for frustration. A small amount of money on a high quality game can be well worth the cost.
When I suggest to parents that they spend time with their children on screens, they return surprised. ‘We had no idea that they were doing so many things’ Or ‘they are building games or learning how to code’. It’s not longer the ‘screen time’ bogeyman, it’s real life.
For there’s more to this than games and screens. How we talk about our children’s passions affects our relationship with them. When we demonise screens, we risk demonising the things our children love. We denigrate their choices. We give them the message that the things they value aren’t worth the time, that they can’t be trusted to make decisions.
Screens screens screens – by Dr Naomi Fisher – Think Again
“How we talk about our children’s passions affects our relationship with them.” This is especially true of monotropic people with dedicated interests.
Stop counting the minutes.
I tell parents to stop counting the minutes for a moment, and instead spend some time watching their children without judgment. They return surprised.
Parents see their children socializing with friends as they play. They’re designing their own mini-games, or memorizing the countries of the world. They’ve built the Titanic in Minecraft. The “screen time bogeyman” starts to melt away.
For me, screens give families an opportunity.
They are a chance to connect with our children by doing something they love. And for some young people, there are benefits that they can’t find elsewhere.
How to talk to kids about video games
Instead of pathologizing screens, join in.
I encourage parents to join their kids. Gaming might bore you, but you can be interested in your child and what makes them come alive. You can value their joy, their curiosity and their exploration. You can give the games a go and see what they find so enthralling. Download Brawl Stars, Minecraft or Roblox, and see if your child will show you how to play. If they don’t want to, find a tutorial video for yourself.
Let them see that you are interested in their passions, because you are interested in them. They will see that you value them for who they are. And from that seed, many good things can grow.
How to talk to kids about video games
When we instead join them, we give them the message that we are interested in the things they enjoy. Even if we aren’t interesting in gaming, we can be interested in our young people and what makes them come alive. We can value the joy.
Screens screens screens – by Dr Naomi Fisher – Think Again
Even you aren’t interested, parallel play is powerful.
If you imagine that an autistic kid at school is likely to be wrenched out of their attention tunnel multiple times every day, each time leading to disorientation and deep discomfort, you are on your way to understanding why school environments can be so stressful for many autistic students. If you can avoid contributing to that, you may find that you have an easier time with your autistic students: try entering into their attention tunnel when you can, rather than tugging them out of it. Parallel play is one powerful tool for this; start where the child is, show interest in what they’re focused on. If you do need to pull them out of whatever they’re focusing on, it’s best to give them a bit of time.
Craft, Flow and Cognitive Styles
In 2026 an Autistic researcher put this reframe on the record. Alvin van Asselt’s Beyond Screen Time argues that “screen time” is not a neutral measure but an ableist one: it collapses a complex, functional behavior into a single number, then treats any divergence from neurotypical patterns as a problem to be reduced. The same finding we cite above — screen use unlinked from anxiety and depression in Autistic youth — anchors his case too. He does not ask whether Autistic people use screens differently. He asks what the screen is for, and answers from a life.
Beyond Screen Time: What the Screen Is For
Count the minutes and you learn nothing about the life. Van Asselt spent his describing four things screens gave him, and every one is a need the built world failed to meet.
Stress and sensory regulation: a predictable screen was safe in ways the “real” world never was, a way to decompress from overstimulating rooms and stay regulated enough to make it through the day. Social development: written, controllable, leave-able interaction opened conversations that face-to-face contact foreclosed. Executive functioning: simulation games, planning tools, and now large language models became a place to practice organizing, sequencing, and problem-solving. Mental health: online Autistic community turned self-stigma into self-understanding.
These are the same benefits the young people below name in their own words. The point is the pivot: stop measuring duration and start asking about function, context, and reason. “Screen use” and “digital media engagement” are better terms than “screen time” because they can hold the question why — and why is where the whole answer lives.
He is honest about the costs, and so are we. Screen use can bring disrupted sleep, sedentary strain, cyberbullying, and platforms engineered to capture attention and sell it back. He names his own position too: lower support needs, financial access, autonomy over his own devices — privileges that shaped how safely he could navigate online. Naming this does not weaken the case. It sharpens it. The neurodiversity-affirmative claim was never “screens are always good.” It is: stop using time as the proxy for harm, and look at what the screen is doing, in what context, for whom.
That “for whom” is where this page goes further than the essay. For some Autistic people, screen use is not recreation and never was. For those who communicate through augmentative and alternative communication, the device is tied to autonomy and personhood — it is the voice, not a distraction from developing one. This is the seam where screen use becomes infrastructure, and where the claim has to reach past relatively lower-support-needs adults to nonspeaking and higher-support-needs people for whom access is not optional. Access is plural. The screen is one bridge among many, and for some it is load-bearing.
One line to keep: van Asselt stresses that when screen use is shaped by hostile environments and unmet support needs rather than free preference, that context must never be used to deny accommodations. Broken systems, not broken people. The screen is often the accommodation an Autistic person built when no one else would.
He also describes conversational AI as a predictable, reversible, nonjudgmental partner for reflecting on hard social moments — the same reversibility-and-safety logic that runs through community accounts of relational AI tools.
Why gaming is actually GOOD for autistic children
In today’s video, I am going to go through the five biggest benefits of gaming and explain why gaming is actually an incredibly important tool for a lot of autistic people.
Why gaming is actually GOOD for autistic children
The research is consistent. Autistic young people game more than neurotypical peers — and they tell us why: agency, emotion regulation, community, achievement, and connection on their own terms. Here are five benefits.
- Learning social skills
- Learning key life skills
- Having a community
- Sense of achievement
- Developing friendships
Design for Change: What Teachers Can Learn from Video Games
Games are hard. Everyone plays them. They reward persistence, teach through failure, and give players control over their experience. Schools could learn something.
Video games are incredibly complex and difficult…yet almost everyone plays them. At the beginning of every game you must learn how to play it, which isn’t easy yet still is so fun! How can teachers better under game design to reimagine their classrooms? What should we remove from school to make it a more exciting place to be?
Design for Change!: What Teachers Can Learn from Video Games
I can actually do it without any help or someone watching over me all the time and giving me constant instruction
This section draws on a study that did something simple and rare: it asked Autistic adolescents directly about their gaming experiences. They told researchers what gaming gave them — autonomy, belonging, relief from overwhelm, and a sense of control that the rest of their lives rarely offered. Their words lead.
- We asked autistic adolescents about gaming, and they gave insightful commentary on how it increases their well-being.
- Gaming provides opportunities for emotion regulation and agency for autistic adolescents.
- Our study emphasizes the importance of considering the first-hand perspectives of autistic young people.
Whilst enjoyment is as good a reason as any to engage in hobbies and leisure activities, the insights provided by the young people here suggest that gaming provides a function that goes beyond sheer enjoyment, providing opportunities for skill development (i.e. decision making) and improving emotional well-being. The data painted a rich picture of the benefits and satisfaction that online gaming can bring to the lives of autistic CYP, and are consistent with previous research exploring the perspectives of autistic young adults in relation to gaming.
‘I can actually do it without any help or someone watching over me all the time and giving me constant instruction’: Autistic adolescent boys’ perspectives on engagement in online video gaming
Online gaming engagement
Autistic young people game more than neurotypical peers. Research is starting to ask why — from their perspective.
Online gaming engagement is one potential area of exploration for understanding factors that contribute towards positive well-being in autistic CYP, who spend significantly more time engaging in online gaming than NT peers (Mazurek & Engelhardt, 2013).
‘I can actually do it without any help or someone watching over me all the time and giving me constant instruction’: Autistic adolescent boys’ perspectives on engagement in online video gaming
Several studies have suggested that autistic CYP engage in gaming more frequently than non-autistic CYP (Mazurek & Engelhardt, 2013; Mazurek & Wenstrup, 2012; Shane & Albert, 2008). Kuo et al. (2014) found that autistic CYP mostly played video games alone; however, around one-quarter of their sample played with peers, using messaging and chats to communicate during gaming. The authors also found that CYP who used computers for social purposes reported more positive friendships.
The disagreement between what parents saw as ‘valuable’ activities, and what CYP preferred to do caused stress and conflict. These findings suggest that previous research into gaming behaviour in autistic CYP might reflect parental bias in perceptions of their child’s gaming behaviour. It is unclear whether gaming is actually ‘problematic’, or simply reflects the parents’ desire for the child to engage in alternative activities.
‘I can actually do it without any help or someone watching over me all the time and giving me constant instruction’: Autistic adolescent boys’ perspectives on engagement in online video gaming
Intervention
Technology-based “social skills” interventions have limited evidence. Gaming for well-being is different.
A meta-analysis from Grynszpan et al. (2014) suggested that technology-based interventions focused on improving ‘social skills’ had limited efficacy.
There is a lack of evidence as to how beneficial the CYP themselves rate these ‘social skills’ to be, and how they relate to their own personal well-being. In regard to personal well-being outcomes, Zayeni et al. (2020) conducted a systematic review to examine the use of video games as a therapeutic support with autistic CYP. They found that commercially available video games can support young people in developing their emotion regulation skills, and to reduce anxiety. However, there is a lack of longitudinal research to help us understand the long-term outcomes of such gaming.
Mazurek et al. (2015) found that video game play offered relief from stress and anxiety experienced in daily life and provided an opportunity for autistic people to momentarily escape from these emotions. This positive impact of gaming on mood is consistent with research from Villani et al. (2018) who identified emotional regulation (ER) as a positive outcome during gaming. They also found that fun and entertainment were highlighted as a major motivator for video game play, which linked to specific game features contributing to the level of enjoyment, for example, achievement and challenge. Similarly, Finke et al. (2018) found that forming and maintaining friendships, emotional regulation, skill development and escapism were key motivators in the gaming engagement of autistic young (mostly male) adults. The participants described gaming as positively impacting their well-being in multiple ways, and providing a therapeutic way to disengage from the stressors of everyday life.
Their testimony demonstrated that gaming has a positive impact on the subjective well-being of autistic people, and may provide valuable insights into the ways in which autistic people manage their own mental health needs (Lam et al., 2021).
Overall, the findings of this research were consistent with previous studies showing that gaming provides a positive outlet for autistic people. However, unlike previous studies, we did not focus on how this testimony could be used to encourage normative social skills. Instead, our findings highlight the need to acknowledge and validate the viewpoints and experiences of autistic young people in research about their interests and well-being. The young people in this study demonstrated a complex understanding of their own interests, emotional needs, outsider perceptions (i.e. parental disagreements) and challenges in balancing responsibilities with leisure time. We recommend that instead of focusing on the use of autistic CYP interests as a way to develop skills that we think they may find challenging, we should recognize that autistic CYP may already be developing these skills (e.g. autonomy) in ways that adults may not expect. Helping caregivers and educators to recognize the insights that young people have into their own needs, and supporting young people to ‘invite them in’ can lead to further self-development opportunities for young people to find their own methods for self-regulation and skill development.
‘I can actually do it without any help or someone watching over me all the time and giving me constant instruction’: Autistic adolescent boys’ perspectives on engagement in online video gaming
Being your own boss: a sense of agency and belonging
One of the strongest themes in the research: agency. In a world that constantly overrides Autistic young people, games hand control back.
One of the key motivations for engagement with online gaming was the sense of autonomy and belonging that it fostered in the young people. It provided them with the opportunity to make decisions and have control over an aspect of their life, as well as providing the opportunity to ‘try out’ different roles that might be ordinarily inaccessible.
‘I can actually do it without any help or someone watching over me all the time and giving me constant instruction’: Autistic adolescent boys’ perspectives on engagement in online video gaming
A chance to make the choices
Games are one of the few spaces where Autistic young people get to decide. That matters more than it might seem.
The ability to manipulate game features and exert control over players was a consistent theme for many participants. They explained how having opportunities to successfully influence how the narrative unfolds throughout the game appeared fulfilling and satisfying. Participants noted that games were, ‘more fun than the real world because you are in control’ (Aaron) and ‘you can be the boss’ (Luke). The interactive and creative nature of game design allows for dimensions to be fine-tuned to reflect the players’ thoughts and choices
The level of agency the participant felt they had within a game was often associated with positive feelings of enjoyment, ‘when I get to tell everyone what to do, it’s great,’ and ‘I feel good. No one tells you what to do. I do’ (Toby).
‘I can actually do it without any help or someone watching over me all the time and giving me constant instruction’: Autistic adolescent boys’ perspectives on engagement in online video gaming
Having the option to be powerful
Gaming offers identity exploration that the physical world often forecloses for Autistic young people.
The ability to take on different identities and become immersed in a fantasy world where you could be and do anything you liked was something the young people in this study found particularly appealing. Specifically, the opportunity to test multiple new identities and attribute their desired characteristics such as strength, power and social status provided a level of fulfilment and satisfaction as they engage with that character.
The challenge of building up a powerful character, and developing skill during gameplay was something that the young people also found intrinsically motivating, giving them the opportunity to acquire skill and knowledge and be recognized as an expert.
‘I can actually do it without any help or someone watching over me all the time and giving me constant instruction’: Autistic adolescent boys’ perspectives on engagement in online video gaming
Being part of the group
Online gaming lowers the sensory and social barriers that make face-to-face connection hard. For some Autistic young people, it’s where friendship becomes possible.
‘I can actually do it without any help or someone watching over me all the time and giving me constant instruction’: Autistic adolescent boys’ perspectives on engagement in online video gaming
Learning how to switch off: regulating emotions through gaming and escapism
Games provide decompression. That’s not avoidance — it’s regulation.
The young people cited escape from the stressors of everyday life, and the impact it had on their emotional well-being as a strong motivator to engage in online gaming, ‘It isn’t real life so I can transport my brain there and forget about things’ (Tommy). Gaming provided a safe place, and a distraction from their fears and struggles, ‘I can forget about the things that scare me and buzz around my brain’ (Toby). The need for time away from outside pressures was also a common experience, ‘People around me make me frustrated. If I don’t want to do something they keep going on and on,’ (Luke). Henry specifically mentioned the pressures they faced within the school and how gaming provided the opportunity to switch off from it all while still developing new skills.
In addition to providing somewhere to relax and unwind, some young people reported how gaming also provided a way to deal with negative emotions. Online gaming was sometimes used as a distraction from less appealing activities which participants found frustrating or boring
‘I can actually do it without any help or someone watching over me all the time and giving me constant instruction’: Autistic adolescent boys’ perspectives on engagement in online video gaming
A need for understanding: dispositional diversity and parental conflict
Conflict over gaming often reflects a gap in understanding, not a problem with the gaming itself.
It was also clear that gaming helped the young people to unwind and provided the space they needed to engage with family life, though this wasn’t always clear to caregivers. Freddie described how gaming allowed him to ‘switch off’ in order to make that transition between the demands of school and home: My mum usually knows when I come home from school, I play it straight away. If she asks me about my day, I’ll just get annoyed. I need to switch off first.
‘I can actually do it without any help or someone watching over me all the time and giving me constant instruction’: Autistic adolescent boys’ perspectives on engagement in online video gaming
Getting into the flow: Balancing monotropic focus with self-care
Monotropic immersion can make transitions hard. The answer is not restriction — it’s collaboration.
The young people explained their reluctance to engage in everyday activities associated with self-care or homework when they had not achieved a particular goal in the game (e.g. ‘levelling up’). Some of the young people noted that their immersion within a game could make it difficult to disengage, and that this might lead to staying up late playing instead of going to sleep.
Alex noted it affecting his eating habits, I would probably keep playing because I’m not actually hungry. I just have dinner because I have to.
‘I can actually do it without any help or someone watching over me all the time and giving me constant instruction’: Autistic adolescent boys’ perspectives on engagement in online video gaming
The importance of autonomy
Autistic young people have less control over their daily lives than neurotypical peers. Games restore some of it.
Participants highlighted a desire for autonomy and opportunities for agency as a strong motivator for engaging in online video gaming. The pervasive nature of these comments indicated that the young people felt like they had little control over most of their daily lives. This was reinforced by their reflections on the use of gaming to de-stress, where many of the young people spoke of feeling pressured by the demands of others. The young people in this study were also engaging with gaming in a way that promoted their agency and decision-making skills which are instrumental in self-advocacy across the lifespan (Pavlopoulou, 2020). Gaming may be one way that young people are able to ‘try out’ more adult or responsible roles in a safe environment and help them to develop their decision-making skills.
This desire to try out different aspects of identity was also explicitly highlighted by the young people as something they found enjoyable about game-play, particularly the chance to make their own decisions, and to be ‘powerful’. Many autistic young people experience social stigma (Crane et al., 2019), peer victimization (Fisher & Taylor, 2016), social exclusion (Kloosterman et al., 2013) and an increase in personal restrictions in comparisons to non-autistic peers (MacMullin et al., 2016). The opportunity to experience life as a powerful person may provide the opportunity to roleplay a more idealized version of themselves.
Power and autonomy, however, were not the only aspects of identity-switching that participants enjoyed. The young people talked about the creative and fantastical aspects of gaming (such as flying, and character customization) as well as the opportunity to see the world through someone else’s eyes. These statements highlight the creativity and perspective-taking skills of autistic young people, which can often be overlooked.
‘I can actually do it without any help or someone watching over me all the time and giving me constant instruction’: Autistic adolescent boys’ perspectives on engagement in online video gaming
Self-regulation
Games are tools Autistic young people use to manage their own emotional well-being. Understanding that changes how caregivers respond.
Video games provided the young people in this study with an outlet for daily stress, and worked as both a way to distract from, and deal with negative emotions as well as increasing feelings of positive well-being and happiness. This is consistent with previous research showing that gaming can provide opportunities for emotion regulation (Reinecke et al., 2012; Villani et al., 2018) and stress release, a key motivation for gaming highlighted by autistic adults (Finke et al., 2018). The participants in the current study demonstrated insights into their own emotional needs and the strategies they use for managing their emotional well-being. These insights can provide caregivers with an understanding of how to support their young people in managing their own well-being. Additionally, they can help caregivers to see why a young person might appear to be prioritizing gaming over other responsibilities (i.e. doing their homework). This information may provide caregivers with the opportunity to find ways to promote agency, for example, encouraging their young person to manage their own emotions in positive ways but also to seek help when struggling instead of avoiding the problem altogether.
‘I can actually do it without any help or someone watching over me all the time and giving me constant instruction’: Autistic adolescent boys’ perspectives on engagement in online video gaming
Social opportunities
For Autistic young people who find face-to-face communication draining or difficult, online gaming creates space for genuine connection.
‘I can actually do it without any help or someone watching over me all the time and giving me constant instruction’: Autistic adolescent boys’ perspectives on engagement in online video gaming
Dispositional diversity and parental conflict
What looks like “too much” from a parent’s perspective often looks different from inside the Autistic experience. That gap has consequences.
Despite online gaming providing a wealth of benefits to the young people in this study, they recognized that their parents were not always understanding of their motivations for their engagement with gaming. Milton (2014) highlighted how the concept of ‘dispositional diversity’ (the variation in disposition across different people) can lead to conflict, when mutual misunderstandings arise from a lack of insight into the other’s perspective. The participants expressed how disagreements over what constitutes ‘too much’ gaming could lead to strained relationships with their parents. The majority of studies examining ‘problematic gaming’ in autistic young people typically rely on parent report (Craig et al., 2021). Our findings suggest that what might be labelled as problematic gaming in autistic young people is not necessarily due to ‘excessive’ gaming, but might be due to a disparity in what is classified as excessive by parents (particularly those who do not see the value in gaming as a pastime) and young people. This disparity is important to address, given that parents who see their autistic children as engaging in what they classify as excessive gaming tend to enforce stricter restrictions than they would for siblings (MacMullin et al., 2016; Mazurek & Wenstrup, 2012). These restrictions could lead to the removal of important self-regulation strategies used by autistic young people to modulate their own mood and well-being. The current study provides valuable knowledge to support a sensitive approach from parents and professionals, which acknowledges the needs, experiences and priorities of autistic young people. It is important that we recognize the positive impact that engagement with hobbies can bring to autistic young people, whilst also stressing the need for balancing this engagement with other aspects of their daily routine and responsibilities.
‘I can actually do it without any help or someone watching over me all the time and giving me constant instruction’: Autistic adolescent boys’ perspectives on engagement in online video gaming
Monotropism and flow states
Deep immersion reflects how Autistic cognition works at its best. It’s not a problem to be managed — it’s a feature to be understood.
The young people in this study did acknowledge that it could be difficult to disengage from gaming when they were immersed in completing a particular task, and that this might cause difficulty in other aspects of their daily routine (i.e. remembering to go to sleep, or eat dinner). This increase in immersion can be explained by the monotropic attentional style theorized to be a core feature of autistic cognition (Murray et al., 2005). Monotropism is characterized by a more singular attentional allocation (as opposed to spreading attention across stimuli, in a polytropic manner) and can lead to increased flow states (McDonnell & Milton, 2014), where complete absorption in an enjoyable task can make it more challenging to track the passing of time (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990) and disengage from one task to move on to another. Finding ways to balance engagement in leisure activities with other responsibilities is something many people (autistic or not) have to learn to develop as they transition into adulthood and as responsibilities increase. Placing strict restrictions on gaming time is unlikely to help young people to develop this balance effectively. Instead, caregivers may want to work with their young person to figure out ways to help them transition more smoothly from one activity to another, and learn about the potential impact of neglecting self-care (i.e. being too tired the next day from staying up too late online gaming). Future research should examine how we can support autistic young people to balance their leisure time with other daily responsibilities, with a focus on personal autonomy that will aid in the development of independence.
‘I can actually do it without any help or someone watching over me all the time and giving me constant instruction’: Autistic adolescent boys’ perspectives on engagement in online video gaming
Why the bounded medium widens a monotropic attention window instead of narrowing it has a long root — one Autistic thinkers dug decades ago.
Games Before Bed
Counter to common assumptions, gaming before bed can be part of a healthy regulation routine for Autistic young people.
One of our young Stimpunks wanted to emphasize this quote:
However, a self-report study from Pavlopoulou (2020) examining sleep and well-being in autistic CYP found that engaging in video games prior to bedtime could help young people to unwind as part of their regular nightly routine.
‘I can actually do it without any help or someone watching over me all the time and giving me constant instruction’: Autistic adolescent boys’ perspectives on engagement in online video gaming
The Naturally Monotropic Medium: Why the Screen Fits
Everything above is testimony — what Autistic people say the screen gives them. Here is why it gives it, and the fact that Autistic people named the why first, decades before the field caught up.
In 1999, Dinah Murray and Mike Lesser called the computer a “naturally monotropic” medium: contained, rule-governed, predictable, reversible, its stimuli restricted across every sensory channel. For a monotropic mind, the bounded frame does not shrink the attention window — the ease of it widens the window. Remove the tax of dragging in context from everywhere, and there is suddenly room to move. Their proof was a nonspeaking Autistic teenager who, handed an animation program, built films hundreds of frames long: forethought, concentration, creativity, the desire to show someone — every capacity the deficit literature of the day filed under absent, present the moment the medium stopped fighting him. This is the root of our online space, and we trace it in full in Autism and Computing.
The fitted screen supplies one more thing: permission to be wrong. When the irreversible mistake is the rare one, the capacities that only appear under safety appear. They were never absent. They were waiting for conditions where a mistake did not mean a scolding or a shock.
Twelve years on, Murray turned the proof into a method: sit beside the learner, don’t crowd. Watch. Don’t intervene unless asked. Don’t divert the flow. She called the good companion cotropic — one who joins the attention tunnel rather than demanding the learner leave it. That is co-regulation through a shared object of attention, and we lay out the whole technique in Inside the Tunnel: How to Sit Beside a Monotropic Learner.
Three rings of one tree. 1999 demonstrated it. 2011 taught how to sit inside it. Van Asselt’s 2026 account is the same insight measured again from a life. The environment was always the variable, and Autistic people named it first.
This is also why the page is called what it is. Murray and Lesser saw the early internet as the first newly autism-compatible environment in generations — Autistic people already building mutual support and self-advocacy, constructing the conditions of their own participation. That is why screens are infrastructure: not because they are neutral tools, but because Autistic people built, and keep building, the niche a hostile world refused to provide.
We keep the insight and leave the framing. Both texts speak the clinical register of their day — “therapy,” person-first phrasing, the vocabulary of deficit. The computer was never therapy for a disorder; it was the removal of a barrier an autism-incompatible world had built. And Murray flagged the real risk herself: a good fit is not an excuse to abandon a learner to the machine. The companion beside the tunnel was never optional, and no single modality is a universal key. Access is plural.
The lineage has a living edge. Where Murray and Lesser called the computer naturally monotropic and let it join the attention tunnel, 2026 researchers made the model itself monotropic — bounding a system’s competence to a single domain. Same tree, newest ring: Monotropic AI.
Hard Mode is My Norm: Gaming Accessibility and Community
@NeonAderyn shares a “deeply personal love letter” to the gaming industry in this talk at the 2018 Gaming Accessibility Conference. Their personal story of gaming accessibility is moving, illuminating, and joyfully filled with love and compassion for gaming and developers.
This is a first-person account of what gaming accessibility means for a disabled Autistic gamer — not as a UX problem, but as a matter of survival, community, and love.
https://channel9.msdn.com/Shows/Level-Up/GAConf-2018-A-Fraught-Love-Letter-to-the-Games-Industry
I believe Games should be for everyone so I gave an emotional and difficult talk at @GA_Conf earlier this year. I haven’t watched it yet because I’m too nervous, but there were tears. Why #accessibility and games are SO important to me: https://channel9.msdn.com/Shows/Level-Up/GAConf-2018-A-Fraught-Love-Letter-to-the-Games-Industry #a11y #gamedev
@NeonAderyn
Like @NeonAderyn, I’m autistic, managing chronic pain, and losing bodily and cognitive function. I relate to much of her story. I cried along in recognition and remembrance. Thank you, @NeonAderyn.
Video games have saved my life.
Along with books, the ongoing explosion of good scripted television, and online communities of fellow autistic and disabled people, games get this “chronic loaf” through a life now lived mostly in bed, where I am propped and bolstered against gravity and assisted by articulated arms in a creche of shredded foam. Games help many disabled people like me through struggles with the medical model, structural ableism, and structural inaccessibility. They help us exist in our bodies and world, and beyond. They are essential to coping.
Games were a big help to my mental health and personal struggles, they got me through some big scary things as a child and a teenager. And this is where my spark of adoration for the industry began.
Games bolster us when our health, lives, identities, and support networks erode.
…from losing bodily and cognitive function to hospital stays, losing friends, communities, a lot of what made me me.
Game immersion is therapy and pain management.
Games have been my company, my community, my adventure, my therapy. They’ve challenged me in more ways than one. Games have even been pain management.
Games empower us and make us feel wholer.
Games can be more than entertainment, they empower us.
The games I love make me feel wholer than I can in this society we have today, and believe me I’ll remember the ones that leveled the access for us, and made access as effortless as it was for everyone else.
Perhaps most importantly, games provide community. Chronic pain, reduced mobility, sensory overwhelm, and social anxiety limit my excursions beyond my Cavendish bubble.
Living with progressive disability can be really isolating.
I’m different, I don’t fit in society the way other people do, and it’s both physically and mentally isolating.
Through backchannels, written communication, and games, I’ve connected with many, including the #ActuallyAutistic community.
@NeonAderyn‘s talk is a personal story of gaming accessibility that includes autistic auditory processing (I turn on subtitles because I process and remember text better than speech), sensory overwhelm, and the life-changing importance of connecting with your tribe. Love this talk.
Games were a big help to my mental health and personal struggles, they got me through some big scary things as a child and a teenager. And this is where my spark of adoration for the industry began.
Video games have saved my life.
…from losing bodily and cognitive function to hospital stays, losing friends, communities, a lot of what made me me.
Living with progressive disability can be really isolating.
I’m different, I don’t fit in society the way other people do, and it’s both physically and mentally isolating.
The games have saved me. By my love of games, I found the accessibility community. I became in advocacy work, and I found purpose.
I found I had community just by talking about games.
Through streaming I found even more community, people like me, but also people not like me at all. Just by being out there both showing how inclusion matters and finding a way to break down the ways people see disability. When we can play the same games as the rest of the community, they unite us despite how different we are. Games can be more than entertainment, they empower us. Inclusion at every level of the industry makes a difference.
Games have been my company, my community, my adventure, my therapy. They’ve challenged me in more ways than one. Games have even been pain management.
When I save games saved my life, I really mean it.
The games you all work so hard to make for us bring me so much. I have such deep connections to the games I love.
The games I love make me feel wholer than I can in this society we have today, and believe me I’ll remember the ones that leveled the access for us, and made access as effortless as it was for everyone else.
Disabilities intersect and fluctuate.
My needs change frequently, even sometimes in the middle of playing a game.
I believe accessibility is really not that much different than accounting for normal human variation. I would even argue that disability is normal human variation.
Having empathy for your audience informs good design. But, I believe it goes two ways, and I want all of you to know and feel that we get it. Many of us disabled gamers know the struggle of accessibility. We live and breathe it. We know how hard you’re working. We see you, and we appreciate you.
Most of my frustrations as a disabled gamer could have been solved had the options been given to me to change things in some way.
Button remaps are a big deal for both physically and cognitively disabled gamers like me, even when disabilities are relatively mild.
Button remaps are important for using third part assistive tech.
Sometimes I have to choose a lack of control in physical pain over constantly pressing the wrong buttons
Accessibility for one group can lead to accessibility for others.
Autistic people like me can also benefit from subtitles? I process information in every form differently to most. I especially struggle when speech is coupled with animated lips that move imperfectly with the words.
Subtitles helped me enormously. I need subtitles. I miss a lot without them.
When subtitles aren’t clear enough, whether that’s due to font choice, text size, or contrast issues, my imperfect sight, dyslexia, and ADHD all collide, and I’m likely to get even less information than if there were no subtitles at all.
I live with something called sensory processing disorder where I process sensory information differently. Too much of anything or everything, and I can get extremely overwhelmed.
I don’t always know at first what I’m finding inaccessible about a game.
Disabled gamers like me want to help you. We are experts. Include us.
It is dangerous to go alone. Take us.
In my experience, the best results of implementing accessibility are when disabled people are included in the process.
You’re not in this alone. We are here.
Disabled people are great overachievers. Even if something is prohibitive or extremely difficult, we strive for a way.
We face barriers in games all the time, but we have some of the most creative solutionists. Again, we often find a way.
Most games I’ve played have been hard mode for me in some way because I’ve been working around barriers.
I want to feel like I matter to the industry I adore so much.
For me, accessibility is about quality of life. A lack of accessibility doesn’t always mean zero access at all. More often than not, it means playing is painful, exhausting, extra frustrating, or just not very fun. Sometimes it’s a reminder of how different I am to the majority of the world. Now, gamers like to makes jokes about things that break their immersion, cliches, bugs, clunky UI. But as a disabled gamer, my immersion could be broken by heightening my sense of being disabled, of being different.
Games that provide us the options we need, not only give us great adventure, profound experience, and fun, they include us in a community that otherwise we aren’t a part of. It is a brilliant thing.
I deeply adore this industry and everything it does for me. I’ll be loyal to the grave to accessible games and inclusive studios. I’ll promote them to death and defense their honor everywhere I set wheel.
“Work as if you live in the early days of a better world.”
GAConf 2018: A Fraught Love Letter to the Games Industry | Microsoft Docs
