By: Cristina Gaudio, NCSA Legal & Policy Fellow
I am a late 90’s, early 2000’s, older “Gen Z” kid. Born right after the turn of the century, I am used to straddling the line between changing times. I grew up with a family iPad, but I was not an iPad kid. I played video games while my American Girl dolls sat beside me on the floor. I remember when Apple released the first iPhone and then proceeded to unveil a new model every year, each one marking time alongside me.
Living at the turn of changing times has meant feeling caught between sharply shifting worldviews. As is the natural course of human development, my personal growth has coincided with a heightened understanding of my surroundings. Along the way, I have borne witness to the drastic polarization of politics that defines the current arena of public discourse. In particular, I have seen social media emerge as a driving force behind public opinion, where internet jargon shapes, enshrines, and sometimes warps, the way that we think about the world.
This influence is not inherently negative. Social media has the incredible ability to mobilize people for good causes, raise awareness, and rapidly disseminate knowledge that would have once been out of reach. It has created new spaces for connection, messaging, and activism that previous generations could hardly have imagined.
However, this landscape comes with a serious downside. Social media, and the messages that trend across it, breed the perception that there is only one socially approved side of every hot-button story. With one glamorous narrative dominating popular issues, social media promotes patterns of groupthink, conformity, and image-based reasoning, where young people hop on bandwagons of reposting on issues that they know nothing about. The soapbox becomes a magnet for the biggest clout grifters, rather than the sharpest thinkers and keenest listeners. These loud, popular voices grab the glittering microphone and do not let go, stifling authentic discourse and reinforcing echo chambers that fail to foster genuine understanding.
While I am now ashamed to admit it, I made do in this environment for years. I am naturally attention-averse, and when I chose to exist in the social media space, I did so from a healthy distance and with a benign presence. I engaged with posts I agreed with, and quietly ignored those I did not. Most importantly, any qualms that I may have had with popular, correct narratives did not leave the confines of my mind.
This worked, until social media distorted an issue close to my heart and threw it back in my face so hard that I broke. Indeed, one lovely day, the TikTok warriors and their swaths of followers reached autism. When they landed in the autism discourse space, they did not simply spout false narratives about the reality of autism as a disorder. No, they went so far as to repackage autism into a quirk, aestheticize it into a trend, and demand that we swallow it whole in the name of social acceptance. Autism is not to be cured, fixed, or changed, they said. It must simply be taken as is.
What’s wrong with blanket acceptance, you ask? Well, this false messaging would require me to gaslight myself at the cost of someone else’s life. I will not nod along with messaging that demands social compliance while erasing lived truth—especially when that truth belongs to someone vulnerable. You see, my brother has autism, and for him, autism is not a quirk, a trend, or a subtle difference. It is a crippling disability that shapes every aspect of his life. If we are to take his autism as is, making no effort to alleviate its worth symptoms, provide him with medical treatment, or utilize therapeutic interventions, his quality of life will suffer tremendously, and he will be even more disempowered and limited in his independence. To see the popular narrative reframe his struggle into something soft, palatable, and performatively celebrated did not just strike a nerve—it shattered a boundary I did not know I had. It crossed my personal point of no return.
From that moment on, I broke the cardinal Gen Z rule of never publicly disagreeing with a prevailing social media narrative. I began speaking out—honestly, openly, and unapologetically—because this reality is too important to be glossed over in the name of political correctness. I landed a premier graduate fellowship with the National Council on Severe Autism, injecting the interests of “not-so-pretty” autism onto the front lines of policy and legislative conversations. I have helped bring visibility to adults with severe autism who have aged out of the system, to families left without services or support, and to nonverbal children whose autism manifests in self-injurious behaviors so intense that they cannot be safely served in typical special education classrooms. I watched my boss land on the front page of The New York Times, not for toeing the line, but for breaking the silence. When the lives of the most vulnerable are being overshadowed by the egos of popular online voices, pushing back, I have learned, is my moral obligation as a citizen.
And now, for the first time in my life, I am witnessing the tides shift away from a prevailing false narrative. Is this simply a function of increased visibility, as I have now landed on the front lines of a hot-button fight? Maybe. But it is also possible that the manicured internet narratives have gotten so out of hand that Gen Z, sick of being lied to, tired of disagreeing in the dark, is rising up and taking the risk of dissenting publicly.
I am willing to bet on this latter possibility. Because if there is one thing I know about my generation, it is that we are not actually stupid: we have simply mastered the art of pretending to be for the sake of social survival. To my fellow Gen Z-ers, hear me when I say: disagree, push back, tell the truth even when it is unpopular. You’ll live. In fact, you may even find that it’s liberating over here.
Author’s Note:
Cristina Gaudio is the 2025–2026 Legal Policy and Advocacy Fellow at the National Council on Severe Autism. A JD/MPP candidate at Vanderbilt University and a proud autism sibling, Cristina is dedicated to advancing evidence-based policies that support individuals with severe and profound autism. Her work focuses on Medicaid reform, housing access, and meaningful services for profoundly affected individuals. She also serves as a U.S. Air Force Reserve Officer.