"A World of Difference: Embracing Neurodiversity," S3, E1 | "Getting Social with the LD Community"

Social media is almost inescapable in today’s world, for better or worse. Today around seven-in-ten Americans use social media to engage the world, according to the Pew Research Center. The numbers are growing as quickly as the new social media platforms to accommodate the connections.  

And while too much of it amounts to doom scrolling society’s slog towards perdition, British journalist Jon Ronson rightly noted, “The great thing about social media was how it gave a voice to voiceless people.” 

And too often voiceless has described the neurodivergent and the people who love them.  Take parents of children with autism, ADHD, and other learning differences desperately searching for ways to support them. Or neurodivergent individuals longing to turn the page on wrongheaded narratives that cast them as weird.

Enter social media — part support group and living, breathing Info Please almanac for moms and dads in search of life hacks for parenting their kids with learning disabilities, and also a far-reaching megaphone for young and proudly neurodivergent content creators to shout out their truth.

On this episode, you’ll meet a woman who helps parents on Facebook sort through the extra that often accompanies rearing children who learn differently.

Next, you meet a handful of creative neurodivergent influencers who use TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram as their canvas to paint new and vibrant portraits of what it means to be an individual who thinks and learns differently.

Later, you’ll meet our latest “Difference Maker,” Penn Holderness, a former TV journalist who has pivoted to YouTube where he uses humor to educate about the serious topic of embracing neurodiversity.