Newest generations of Aspies

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Is it true what they say online that more Aspergians than ever are currently born in the world? Anyone care to comment? If so, I wonder why that is...

They say so, but I think it's just about Asperger's and PDD-NOS becoming diagnoses, and people recognizing it in themselves (adults) and teachers etc looking for it in children. There was no lack of eccentric people in the past either, but without it being a diagnosis, they were seen eccentric instead.

So thank goodness for people like Kanner and Asperger (who were on the spectrum too, right?) for initiating the terminology and diagnoses and helping pave a way for recognition and a general awareness that there are people on the spectrum who deserve proper treatment from society just like any another member of our species. Let us hope more and more NT people, especially employers, become aware of us.

I don't think the proportionate number of people on the spectrum is increasing, just the number who are being diagnosed. Having an autism diagnosis at one time pretty much meant a one-way ticket to the loonie bin, and a lot of parents who had children on the higher-functioning end of the spectrum either thought their kids were just "quirky", or they didn't want to risk them being institutionalized. When my father, who is undiagnosed but definitely on the spectrum, was growing up, my grandparents knew there was something different about him, but they didn't want to tell him because they were worried that it would stifle him.

Autism used to be misdiagnosed as schizophrenia or retardation or just eccentricity. Now that there is a diagnosis, suddenly uninformed people think there is an epidemic.

As Asperger's didn't become officially recognized as a disorder until 1994 even though the doctor whom it's named after "discovered" it in the 1940's, the entire world has a lot to do to make up for lost time. I know that from experience.

If, after 20 years since the diagnostic criteria for Asperger's Syndrome (AS) were added to the then-new DSM-IV diagnostic manual (1994), the rate (not the actual numbers) of diagnoses continue to increase, it would appear that something other than public and professional awareness is the cause of the increase, wouldn't it? I agree that a continuing increase of diagnoses among adults instead of children would occur as the awareness of this diagnosed population is still a relatively new phenomenon. As I have emphasized elsewhere at Wrong Planet, there are naturally occuring diseases and disorders which can also be induced or even mimicked by certain environmental conditions. Would the environmental induction or mimicking of AS (and other autism-spectrum disorders (ASDs)) be so surprising within the context of these other induced or mimicked diseases and disorders? The fingerprint of the induction or mimicking would be the increasing diagnosis rates in demographic and geographic areas which exceed the baseline of naturally occuring AS and other ASDs. Knowing what that baseline is needs to be examined, of course. But, the idea that AS and other ASDs are exempt from such induction or mimicking seems myopic.

there's no way to say that OP.
all we know is that the amounts of diagnosed cases increased, but that also happens becouse 1) the cirteria have been expanded, making more people fall into the spectrum, 2) we became better at diagnosing the criteria (both old and new) and 3) awareness has led more people to seek assessment.

there might very well be an increase in the true amount of ASD children being born, but since we are still (far) below 100% diagnostic rate (and still also have false positives), there is no way to be sure of the actual number, let alone mutations in said numbers...

No reliable research has been done on this that takes all the variables into account. A lot of speculation about the increase has been misreported as fact, especially in online articles.