"Everyone is a little bit autistic"

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I agree with the sentiment, but surely being diabetic is something you acquire over time, whilst autism is something you're born with?

Type 1 diabetes is often speculated to have genetic factors which influence the chance of having it.

https://www.healthline.com/health/diffe ... tes#causes

https://ghr.nlm.nih.gov/condition/type-1-diabetes#

https://www.endocrineweb.com/conditions ... sk-factors

But having a predisposition doesn't mean you'll develop it unless you have a bad diet etc whereas with autism it's not a predisposition but a developmental order of things - or can people also have a predisposition to autism and develop it later in life? (goes against all literature known on the subject)

but having a predisposition doesn't mean you'll develop it unless you have a bad diet etc whereas with autism it's not a predisposition but a developmental order of things - or can people also have a predisposition to autism and develop it later in life? (goes against all literature known on the subject)

I've heard this said.
I think it is being said by people who do not understand the disorder but listen to the symptoms and think they share one or more of the symptoms and therefore believe ASD is universal.
If you do not have ASD, I think its difficult to understand how it can affect all or nearly every aspect of your life and not just occasionally.

I'm thinking more of the process by which a person is diagnosed. It is a complex process, but in the end it really comes down to the diagnostician evaluating a series of test results, etc., and making a judgement along the lines of "does the person have sufficiently many autistic traits, sufficiently strongly expressed, to qualify for the diagnosis?"

There is probably no broad, unpopulated, gap between the "scores" of the set of people who do not qualify for an autism diagnosis and the set of those who do. Everybody who is tested will get some "score," some end-result outcome of the measurements and observations that are made during the diagnosis. Of course the rather complex results of the full diagnostic tests do no necessarily lend themselves to being characterised as a single "figure of merit" score. However in the end the results are characterised, they are going to be in the form of matters of degree: "Are the traits in this, that or another area sufficient to warrant a diagnosis of ASD?"

Nothing in science, and especially in such complex areas as neuroscience, is ever purely black or purely white. Nobody is likely to score zero in an evaluation, and be told that they have absolutely not the tiniest hint of any autistic trait whatsoever.

It seems to me that the thing that can be hurtful is not when a neuroscientist speaks of autism as a complex condition that can be expressed to greater or lesser degree in different people, with rather fuzzy boundaries between having ASD and not having ASD. Rather, what can be hurtful is when an ill-informed lay person makes a blanket statement such as "everybody is a little bit autistic" without having any understanding of what they are talking about, and of how debilitating ASD can be for many people.

i agree with the sentiment but surely being diabetic is something you acquire over time while autism something you're born with?

There is such a thing as juvenile diabetes. You are born with it. Though it doesn't onset until your teen years. And it is oddly similar to autism in that it is inborn lifelong and incurable.

I recently had a medical appointment and explained that I’m autistic. It affects how I communicate and understand information, and sometimes I’m misinterpreted as being rude. The person nodded and replied: “Well, everyone’s a little bit autistic.” They then shared something they struggle with, sometimes, when they haven’t had enough sleep.

It wasn’t the first time I’ve heard that line, and I doubt it’ll be the last. It happens often – not only in doctors’ surgeries but in social situations, on social media and many other places besides. And it’s not just me. Online spaces are full of autistic adults and the parents of autistic children expressing frustration at this phrase.

So where does the idea come from, that autistic traits are merely universal human behaviour, just to an exaggerated degree in autistic people?

To answer that, we need to understand what autism is. Autism is a lifelong neurodevelopmental difference. You’re either born autistic, or you’re not. It’s not something you develop over time.

When I teach about autism, I sometimes ask students to think about how they react to sensory discomfort or disruption. There’s usually a long list of things. For instance, being irritated by roadworks, bothered by scratchy clothes or stressed out by a house move. These are all human traits. But they don’t mean you’re autistic.

Life is often stressful, so cortisol levels rise accordingly. That doesn’t mean you’re autistic. It means your nervous system is working as it should. Likewise, noticing loud noises or being anxious about change is perfectly normal. But it doesn’t mean your brain is wired the same way as someone who is autistic.

There are clear differences between autistic and non-autistic people, not just in the kinds of challenges they experience, but in how often and how intensely those challenges occur. Research shows that autistic people have significantly higher rates of sensory sensitivity, communication differences, repetitive behaviour and social difficulties than non-autistic people. For most autistic people, these aren’t things that happen once in a while. They are constant features of life.

So, when someone says “everyone is a little bit autistic”, they’re relying on a myth that flattens those differences. It suggests a spectrum from “not autistic” to “very autistic”, with everyone fitting somewhere on that line.

That’s understandable, because we don’t have a biological test for autism, to give a clear yes or no answer. Instead, questionnaires are often used to initially assess the likelihood of being autistic. But you can’t be a “little bit” autistic.

The term “autism spectrum disorder” was first used in 1994 in diagnostic manuals, to bring together people diagnosed with autism and Asperger’s syndrome, a contentious name linked to Nazi genocide.

Many autism researchers argue that we shouldn’t be dividing autistic people into different groups, as support needs can vary from day to day. Others dislike the term “autism spectrum” because it can be misleading. It’s too often misunderstood as a fixed linear scale. In reality, autism is multidimensional. Different people have different combinations of strengths, needs and experiences. Two autistic people may have little in common apart from their diagnosis.

The “everyone’s a bit autistic” myth can be actively harmful. It’s often used to dismiss the challenges we face or to argue that autistic people don’t really need support. It also contributes to a culture where autism becomes the punchline. Non-autistic people do something like parking in the same space each day, but attribute it to being “a little bit autistic”.

For decades, autistic people weren’t given a platform to share our experiences. The stories told about us, especially in the media, were often created by non-autistic people, and were full of stereotypes. That’s starting to change, but those outdated ideas persist.

Most ASD traits are normal traits exaggerated outside of the normal range. I don't agree with the statement OP used as a title, because it's ass-backwards, but there's a degree of truth to it even if that statement fails to express the idea well.