Our two special needs children are chronologically fully adult now. The challenges they face are increasingly complex but their capabilities have likewise grown.
As in the past their challenges are not unique to adults with a life history of cognitive and/our neurological disorders and diversities. They are, however, more vulnerable than most adults to social media predators who focus on loneliness and relationship frustration. I have a thought on what to do about that, but first I need to provide some context for people who don't live in this world.
In the past I had more control over our children's online actives. That is no longer true, most of what they do online is their own affair. That's partly because managing online activities at any age is very difficult; parents and guardians fight against vast economic forces with little support from Apple or Google. Mostly though it's because they want and deserve the right to make choices, including bad choices.
The bad choices including falling victim to loneliness exploits. Being alone socially and sexually is one of the biggest hardships of adults with cognitive disorders. This is an intractable problem. Cognitively disabled males outnumber females by a large margin (the curse of the stunted Y chromosome) and social interactions including friendships and sexual relationships are almost always cognitively matched. Additionally friendship creation and maintenance requires significant social and cognitive skills.
Loneliness exploits are diverse and can shade into a straightforward business transaction. Is Patreon money solicited for custom art or storytelling an exploit or a commercial transaction or a bit of both? Is the "friendship" of the Patreon relationship different from my favorite writers responding to my tweets? How does this compare to "only friends" or phone sex or sex work?
Fake social media accounts are a step beyond the murky world of Patreon friends. All men receive Facebook and Instagram messages that feature images of beautiful women with large to absurdly large breasts. Most of us understand these are not entirely sincere, but this can be difficult to explain to a lonely adult with a significant congenital or acquired cognitive disability. They want to believe, they forget explanations, and for some the line between imagination, memory, and reality is fluid.
If the authors of these fake profiles were satisfied with small monthly stipends they could be considered just another step beyond Patreon purchases or "only friends" memberships. Sadly, the authors of these fake profiles are looking for large amounts of money. The problem needs our attention.
It's a hard problem to approach directly. "I was looking at the notifications on your lock screen and this beautiful woman is actually a desperate 43 yo man in a Sri Lankan sweatshop" doesn't go over well. Instead I'm going to try responding to the next large breasted invitation I receive and then use the thread to do "hey, look what I got, do you think this is real?" indirect education.
Which leads me to the idea that prompted this post. The best way to educate vulnerable adults about this problem would be a targeted Facebook and Instagram advertising program. These would be paid ads to vulnerable users to remind them that beautiful young women do not do not send flirtatious messages to strangers.
It would be tricky to get these ads onto social media accounts; they aren't the kind of ad that attracts Instagram users. Government support could help, but the cognitively disabled community is too small and invisible to get political support. However the demential (acquire disability) community is large, growing, and politically important. So there might be a way to benefit the congenitally cognitively disabled community by targeting the acquired disability (dementia) community. I need to play with that idea a bit.
It would be interesting to try running a small local campaign that targeted my son. If I do that I'll update this post.
