alt Hacker NewsI think a lot of it is peverse incentives.
There are social (cut me some slack, I'm autistic) and in socialized medicine systems, financial benefits to an autism diagnosis. So yeah, why wouldn't you claim to be autistic, what's the downside?
Add to that Gen-Z, socially awkward, isolated and poisoned by their obessive phone addictions frantically searching the internet "Why do I feel socially awkward?" and a million "Take out autism test!" links later get their answer. Yes indeed, they have autism, the test proved it.
Autism is much more than social awkwardness, and I'm sure you're not intending to be, but this post is extremely dehumanizing and insulting to people dealing with the issues that an ASD diagnosis typically presents with. and, by the way, many high functioning individuals have to fight for their entire lives to even get a diagnosis, so I'm not sure where you're getting your information from that these are being "handed out like candy" or whatever. I can point you to a variety of sources online if you're interested in learning what this actually is.