[rkozik1989]

As someone who's not neurotypical and grew up in the 1990s I don't think we really did much for mental illness or have much of understanding of it until the past 15 or so years. Growing up the school system regarded people are disabled, learning disabled, lazy, normal, or gifted. There was no one checking kids out for social-anxiety, bipolar disorder, depression, etc. unless there was an extremely serious problem with their behavior.

Within the past 40 years they used to lock people like me up, give us lobotomies, forcibly medicate us, etc. Its easy to forget how society used to treat folks with mental illness. Its frankly no wonder that people to this day still hide it. Heck, I've had to contact the EEOC more than once. But the thing is, social-media didn't cause this, video games didn't cause this. I've always been genetically predisposed to this. In my opinion, unfettered access to the Internet in general is probably the worst environment for people with predispositions, but to simply blame everything on the environment we've create online through video games or social-media is wrong if not irresponsible.

[eesmith]

I think your lobotomy timeline is off? As I understand the history, lobotomies became less common in the 1950s, once antipsychotics and antidepressants were available, and by the 1970s were rarely used. By 1984 it would not have been part of standard practice in the US.

"Not neurotypical" is a very wide category, and the vast majority of such were neither locked up nor given lobotomies.

On the other hand, ADHD kids in the 1990s were indeed forcibly medicated, as in, some schools coerced parents to give Ritalin to their child in order to attend school. IDEA 2004 included the 'Prohibition on Mandatory Medication' to prevent schools from doing that: https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/34/300.174 .