A new CDC report revealed that in 2020 more 8-year-olds were diagnosed with autism than ever before.
We took those statistics to a Chattanooga autism expert to find out what the numbers really mean.
Dave Buck, the executive director of the Chattanooga Autism Center says “it's not that there's more autistic people, there's more people who are finally getting assessments."
Buck says physicians are getting better at detecting autism.
In 2020, about 1 in 36 children were diagnosed with autism by age 8. According to the CDC , that's an increase from 1 in 44 children in 2018 and 1 in 150 children in 2000.
The CDC links these trends to improvements in identifying autism, particularly for children in groups that have less access to proper care.
The study also found for the first time, autism diagnosis was more common in Asian, Black and Hispanic children than it was among White children.
Georgia pediatrician Dr. Fiona Blair says she has noticed a link between social isolation during the pandemic and a spike in cases in her office.
“During the pandemic, these children were taken away from the normal social interactions that they would normally do, going to the daycare, going to grandma's house and hanging out with cousins” says Dr. Fiona Blair of ABC Pediatric Group.
Another issue, Dr. Blair says, is a factor is screen time. She says during the pandemic parents who worked from home handed their children electronics to occupy them instead of having natural interactions.
“A lot of parents were working from home. From that nine to five, our child might have been in daycare, getting some interaction and moving them. [During the pandemic] the parent had to be on the computer working and the parent gave this [a cellphone] to the child to pacify them” [4:22 - 4:35]
Various medical studies have tried to find an association between excessive early age screen time access and an autism diagnosis but there are no clear findings.
Buck says one problem during the pandemic was doctors' offices closing their doors, making it difficult for children to be screened for autism.
“The pandemic made it tough to go in to doctors in general, and autism assessments in particular, do need face to face time” says Buck.
Doctors say an early detection of autism allows a child to have their best chance at success.
“I've seen cases like that where the patient, misses their 15 month, their 18 month, and shows up at their 2 and a half checkup. And you're like, oh, no if we'd gotten a little earlier, we could have done some earlier intervention." says Dr. Blair.
Dr. Karen Remley, director of CDC’s National Center on Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities says “The data in this report can help communities better understand how the pandemic impacted early identification of autism in young children and anticipate future needs as these children get older.”