Accessing Social Support and Overcoming Judgment on Social Media among Parents of Children with Special Needs

About 1 out of every 6 children has been diagnosed with a special need in the United States. For their parents, the eco-nomic and emotional costs can be overwhelming. Using a mixed methods approach, we show that parents of children with special needs rely primarily on Facebook pages, Face-book groups, and Yahoo! groups for accessing information and social support. Specifically, these groups offer geo-graphic communities for local needs (e.g. school services) and case-based communities for specific conditions (e.g. au-tism). Promisingly, parents perceive less judgment online than offline when talking about their children’s special needs; however, these perceptions are nuanced. In particu-lar, posts containing humor, achievement, or treatment sug-gestions are perceived to be more socially appropriate than posts containing judgment, violence, or social comparisons. However, results show that social media generally fails at connecting special needs families over time and across the life span. We discuss implications for social media site de-sign and for supporting special needs families