Autism as an Ecosystem Error: The Consequences of Misdiagnosed Screen Addiction

Abstract

Abstract The prevalence of diagnosed autism spectrum disorder (ASD) has increased significantly over the past two decades, yet its diagnosis remains predominantly behavioral and developmental, lacking a validated biomarker to independently confirm the condition. The present report examines the hypothesis that conditions currently diagnosed as autism represent manifestations of screen addiction – including early screen addiction and screen trauma – whose impact on regulation, learning, communication, attachment, and social development – when coupled with inadequate therapies and interventions – produces an autistic phenotype. Consequently, the central problem under consideration is not solely autism, but a potential ecosystemic fallacy: once developmental dysfunction induced by screen addiction is classified as autism, the diagnosis reorganizes subsequent understanding, scientific research, therapy, familial behavior, institutional responses, and social identity around the presumed irreversibility of the condition. The report analyzes the mutually reinforcing diagnostic, medical, scientific, therapeutic, familial, technological, institutional, economic, social, and cultural mechanisms that may perpetuate this error. It is argued that the failure to recognize screen addiction as a potential causal and maintaining factor diverts children and families toward symptom management, thereby leaving the underlying screen exposure and addictive structure intact. The proposed framework calls for a systemic differential assessment of screen addiction in individuals presenting with autistic symptomatology, as well as a direct investigation into whether the elimination of screen exposure, combined with targeted therapy for screen addiction, can alter the developmental trajectory. Should this hypothesis be corroborated, a subset of conditions currently classified as irreversible autism may in fact represent preventable and potentially reversible, environmentally induced impairments. This would necessitate a fundamental paradigm shift in the diagnosis, research, and treatment of autism. Keywords: Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), screen addiction, screen trauma, ecosystemic fallacy, diagnostic expansion, therapeutic chronification, tertiary gain, familial co-addiction, technoference, Munchausen Syndrome by proxy