Massive study of Reddit posts sheds light on lived experiences of autism

A new study published in the journal Autism Research sheds light on how autistic individuals and their communities use Reddit to express themselves, support one another, and challenge traditional views of autism. The researchers used advanced language processing techniques to analyze hundreds of thousands of posts and identified the most common themes in autism-related discussions. The findings suggest that while many conversations center on struggles with relationships, emotions, and daily routines, users also reflect on identity, resilience, and community.

Autism is a neurodevelopmental condition often associated with differences in social interaction, communication, and repetitive patterns of behavior or intense interests. Traditional medical approaches tend to focus on difficulties or deficits, but many autistic individuals and advocacy communities emphasize that these traits are differences shaped by a mismatch between their neurology and societal expectations.

The new study was motivated by a desire to explore how autistic people describe their own experiences outside of clinical or structured research environments. Social media platforms such as Reddit offer users the ability to speak anonymously and openly about their challenges, identities, and interactions with the world. Unlike interviews or surveys, which are typically designed and filtered through a research lens, Reddit posts can offer more spontaneous, nuanced, and personal accounts.

While previous studies have examined how autism is discussed on platforms like Twitter or TikTok, Reddit has received less attention, despite its popularity and depth of conversation. Reddit allows long-form posts, creating a richer space for reflection and dialogue. The researchers aimed to identify what autistic people are actually talking about online, how they describe their experiences, and what kinds of support or understanding they seek.

“We were motivated by the realization that social media is where many autistic individuals share their experiences more freely than in clinical or research settings,” said study author Gianluca Esposito, a professor and director of the Department of Psychology and Cognitive Science at the University of Trento.

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“Traditional medical perspectives often reduce autism to a checklist of symptoms, but online communities such as r/autism offer a more person-centered view of daily challenges, coping strategies, and strengths. By analyzing over 700,000 Reddit posts with advanced topic modeling techniques, we wanted to better understand how autistic voices describe their lived experience,”

The research team analyzing Reddit communities focused on autism, including the large and general subreddit r/autism, as well as 15 smaller communities such as r/Autism_Parenting, r/AutisticAdults, r/AutisticCreatives, and r/Aspergers. Posts were collected between 2009 and 2023 and included both original threads and content from across a wide range of autism-related topics.

To analyze the data, the team used a machine learning technique called BERTopic, which identifies meaningful clusters of topics in large text datasets. Unlike older methods that rely on word frequency alone, BERTopic uses contextual information to better capture the meaning behind discussions. The researchers then used a language model to generate labels for the topics based on keywords and sample posts.

In r/autism alone, 174,102 posts were analyzed. The most frequent topic concerned food selectivity and eating challenges, often related to sensory sensitivities. Users discussed food textures, strong aversions, and the pressure to eat foods that felt uncomfortable or overwhelming. Another major topic was “masking,” or the act of concealing one’s autistic traits in public. Posts in this category reflected the emotional toll of suppressing natural behaviors, sometimes for years, in order to fit in socially.

Many users described confusion about where their authentic personality ended and their learned behaviors began. The discussions included both frustration with societal expectations and relief when able to unmask in safe spaces. Other recurring themes involved stimming behaviors, such as hand-flapping or rocking, and challenges around forming and maintaining friendships.

The analysis also highlighted how users discuss romantic relationships in distinct stages. Some posts focused on early dating experiences, particularly anxiety around disclosure and unfamiliar social scripts. Others centered on long-term relationships, emphasizing communication difficulties and emotional labor.

A second analysis of 15 related subreddits—containing over 291,000 posts—revealed similar themes. However, this broader dataset included more discussions about navigating diagnosis, experiences with medication, and parenting autistic children. Many posts described the emotional complexity of receiving a late diagnosis, especially among adults who had masked traits throughout childhood. Users often expressed feelings of identity confusion, grief over missed support, and a desire to make sense of their life history through a new lens.

Music was another frequent subject, with users describing intense emotional connections to songs, repetitive listening habits, and difficulty switching tracks. These posts painted a picture of how restricted or repetitive behaviors, often viewed negatively in clinical literature, can also serve as meaningful coping strategies.

“One surprising result was how frequently topics like food selectivity and music listening emerged as central themes,” Esposito told PsyPost. “These everyday experiences are rarely prioritized in clinical research, yet they clearly play an important role in autistic people’s lives.”

Some topics fell outside traditional clinical frameworks. One such theme was the emotional bond with pets. Users described animals as sources of unconditional acceptance, emotional regulation, and stability in a world that often felt overwhelming or unpredictable. These relationships sometimes offered comfort that social relationships could not.

“The main takeaway is that autism is not just about deficits, but about differences that become challenging largely because of societal expectations,” Esposito said. “Many discussions focus on masking, sensory sensitivities, friendships, and daily life struggles, but also on positive aspects such as creativity, resilience, and community support. Platforms like Reddit can thus be a valuable source of reliable, peer-driven information that highlights autistic perspectives and emphasizes quality of life rather than pathology.”

While this study provides one of the most extensive looks at autism-related discourse on Reddit, it comes with limitations. One key issue is that it is not always possible to determine whether a Reddit user is autistic, a family member, a professional, or simply someone with an interest in the topic. Posts are anonymous, and identities are not verified. This means that while many discussions appear to reflect lived experiences, some may be secondhand or speculative.

Another limitation is that the analysis did not include comment threads — the replies to original posts. These sub-conversations could offer additional insights into how topics evolve, how community members respond to one another, and what kinds of support or disagreement emerge.

The machine learning model also identified a large number of posts as “outliers,” meaning they did not clearly belong to any specific topic. This may reflect the complexity or uniqueness of some individual stories that do not fit neatly into broader patterns.

“We cannot always know whether the authors of Reddit posts are autistic themselves or family members, and our analysis focused only on English-language discussions,” Esposito noted. “Moreover, while topic modeling reveals broad patterns, it cannot capture the full emotional nuance of individual experiences.”

“Our next goal is to integrate these large-scale social media insights with clinical and community-based studies. We hope to bridge the gap between autistic self-expression and professional research, ensuring that interventions and supports are more aligned with the priorities expressed by autistic people themselves.”

The study, “Autism Spectrum Disorders Discourse on Social Media Platforms: A Topic Modeling Study of Reddit Posts,” was authored by Seraphina Fong, Alessandro Carollo, Giacomo Vivanti, Daniel S. Messinger, Dagmara Dimitriou, and Gianluca Esposito.