Autism and social interactions : understanding relational difficulties in adolescence

If you had to choose only one area where adolescence is particularly cruel for autistic students, it would be this one: social interactions. Not because autistic adolescents do not want relationships — most deeply want them. But because adolescence is precisely the time when social codes reach their maximum complexity, where hierarchies are the most fluid and unpredictable, where humor becomes the most subtle and exclusive, and where difference is most severely sanctioned by peers.

For a student whose brain naturally processes social situations with less automatism and more effort than their peers, middle and high school represent a sort of parallel world whose rules are partially opaque to them — and in which they navigate with a combination of determination, exhaustion, and, too often, silent suffering.

This fourth article in the series offers a comprehensive exploration of social interactions in the autistic profile in secondary school: why they are difficult, how they manifest in daily school life, what the specific risks are (isolation, bullying), and what teachers and institutions can concretely do to create a more accessible social environment.

1. Understanding social difficulties in autism: what research says

Social difficulties in autism have long been described in terms of "deficit" — lack of empathy, absence of theory of mind, inability to understand others. This description is both incomplete and unfair. Contemporary research offers a much more nuanced picture, which profoundly changes the way we can understand and support autistic students in their social relationships.

First, studies show that autistic people do not lack emotional empathy — they often feel the emotions of others very intensely, sometimes too intensely. What is different is cognitive empathy — the ability to infer the mental states of others, to represent what the other thinks or feels without them explicitly saying it. This distinction is fundamental: an autistic student may be deeply affected by a peer's suffering (emotional empathy) without understanding what caused that suffering or knowing how to react in a socially appropriate way (cognitive empathy).

Second, research has proposed the concept of "double empathy" — the idea that communication difficulties between autistic and neurotypical people are not one-sided. Neurotypicals also struggle to understand and decode autistic people — to interpret their less mimetic facial expressions, their more direct communication, their way of relating. Social difficulties in autism are therefore not just a problem for the autistic student — they are a problem of interface between two different neurological functioning modes.

2. Adolescence: a period of maximum social complexity

Each stage of schooling brings its share of social challenges for autistic students. But adolescence — middle and high school — represents a qualitative leap in the complexity of the social codes that must be mastered.

3. The mechanisms of social difficulties in autism

Three main mechanisms underlie social difficulties in autism in secondary school. Understanding them allows for a shift from a behavioral reading ("he is behaving badly") to a neurological reading ("his brain processes the social situation differently").

Decoding non-verbal signals

Human communication is 70-80% non-verbal: facial expressions, tone of voice, posture, gaze, gestures. For most neurotypicals, decoding these signals is automatic and unconscious — it happens effortlessly, in real-time, alongside the processing of verbal content. For many autistic students, this decoding is more laborious: it is less automatic, requires more cognitive resources, and is less reliable. The result is that the autistic student first processes the verbal content (what is said) accurately, but may miss or misinterpret the non-verbal meta-message (how it is said, with what intention).

Managing turn-taking

An ordinary conversation is a complex dance — knowing when to speak, when to listen, how to signal that one has finished, how to take the floor without interrupting the other. These rules are implicit, not taught, and learned through observation and imitation from early childhood. Autistic students may struggle to execute them spontaneously — inadvertently interrupting, talking too long on a topic of interest, or conversely failing to enter an already engaged group conversation.

The cognitive load of the social situation

For an autistic student, every "simple" social interaction — an exchange in the cafeteria line, a group project, a recess — represents a considerable cognitive load. They must simultaneously process verbal content, decode (laboriously) non-verbal signals, decide what response is socially appropriate, and monitor their own behavior to appear "normal." This constant cognitive load is what produces the characteristic exhaustion of the autistic student at the end of the school day.

4. Manifestations in class and in the establishment

5. Social isolation: causes, consequences, and warning signs

Social isolation is one of the most frequent and painful consequences of social difficulties in autism in secondary school. This isolation is rarely chosen — it is the result of years of repeated relational failures, poorly received unintentional clumsiness, and accumulated fatigue in facing the effort that each social interaction represents.

Isolation has direct academic consequences. A student alone in the cafeteria, without access to informal conversations that allow sharing information about classes, assessment dates, and teacher expectations, accumulates a real informational disadvantage. A student who eats alone also does not recover from the overload of the morning — they remain in a state of alertness that reduces their cognitive resources for the afternoon.

Signs of concerning isolation

The student has been eating alone systematically for several weeks. They do not seem to have any peers to talk to during free time. They show increasing sadness or irritability. They frequently mention difficult relationships with their peers (mockery, exclusion) to trusted adults. They are starting to refuse certain school activities with a strong social component (school trip, class outing, sports day). These signals, taken together, deserve active attention from the CPE and the main teacher.

6. Autism and school bullying: a structural vulnerability

Autistic students are statistically two to three times more frequently victims of school bullying than their neurotypical peers. This vulnerability is not related to a "fragility of character" — it is structural, linked to the characteristics of the autistic profile that interact with bullying dynamics.

Several factors increase this vulnerability. The autistic student may not immediately recognize that they are being bullied — taking mockery literally, interpreting hostility as joking, or not understanding why their reactions fuel the behavior of the perpetrators. Their reaction to provocations is often predictable and intense — making them a "profitable target" for students seeking a spectacular reaction. And their limited social network reduces protective witnesses and increases their isolation in the face of bullying situations.

7. Group work and imposed social situations

Group work is one of the most complex school situations for autistic students — because it combines in a single format the difficulties of social decoding, cognitive flexibility, and managing the unexpected. The dynamics of a work group — negotiating roles, managing disagreements, adapting to others' proposals — call upon precisely the skills that are most often weakened in autism.

Why group work fails for autistic students

The autistic student may want the work to be done "correctly" (according to their own conception of correctness) and resist the compromises proposed by the group. They may not understand that a peer's tone signals irritation and continue to argue long after the situation has become tense. They may take on all the work to avoid negotiation — or conversely, withdraw completely to avoid conflict. In both cases, their participation in collective work is unsatisfactory — and the resulting grade penalizes disciplinary skills that may be quite present.

Adaptations for group work

• Define roles explicitly and in writing. Rather than letting the group self-organize its roles (which assumes a social decoding that the autistic student may not master), the teacher defines in advance who does what — or proposes a structure of roles that the group adapts. The written role sheet gives the autistic student a predictable framework in which they can function effectively.
• Propose a role that matches their strengths. Research, source verification, critical proofreading, data organization: these roles play to the strengths of the autistic profile (attention to detail, precision, systematic thinking) without exposing them to the most significant difficulties (negotiation, improvisation, managing disagreements).
• Offer an alternative to group work. For students whose social difficulties make group work particularly challenging, offering an alternative (individual work on a comparable topic, with the same level of requirement) allows for measuring disciplinary skills without the work format itself being an obstacle.
• Intervene preventively in case of tension. Without waiting for conflict to erupt, the teacher who observes increasing tension in the group can propose a mediation point — by re-explicitating the group's objectives and everyone's roles. This preventive intervention avoids escalation and crisis.

8. The relationship with adults: a more accessible terrain

A common feature observed in autistic students is their greater ease in relating to adults compared to their peers. Adults tend to communicate more explicitly, have more clearly defined roles, react more predictably, and are less subject to the rapid variations in social code that characterize groups of teenagers. For an autistic student struggling with interactions with peers, trusted adults in the establishment are often a social lifeline.

This preference for adults may be perceived negatively by untrained teachers ("he doesn't socialize normally") or by peers ("he's sucking up to the teachers"). In reality, it is a healthy coping strategy — a way to find accessible and satisfying social interactions in an environment where interactions with peers are often exhausting or painful. The teacher who understands this does not discourage this relationship — they protect it, while working to create more accessible social conditions with peers.

9. What the teacher can do: concrete adaptations

• Make the social rules of the class explicit. "In class, we raise our hand before speaking," "we don't interrupt," "in a group, we listen to everyone before deciding": explicitly formulating and displaying these rules benefits all students and reduces uncertainty for autistic students.
• Protect moments of social recovery. Identify the times of day when the social load is highest (recess, cafeteria, PE) and ensure that the student has access to a decompression space — library, quiet room, peaceful corner. This protection is not exclusion: it is the condition for the student to arrive in class with enough resources to learn.
• Do not force oral participation in large groups. Surprise oral questioning in large groups is an intense anxiety situation for many autistic students. Offering an alternative — responding in writing, expressing themselves in a small group or in individual interviews — allows for assessing knowledge without the format creating an additional obstacle.
• Be a trusted adult available. A teacher who clearly signals to the autistic student that they can come talk to them if a classroom situation puts them in difficulty — and who honors this availability — creates relational security that significantly reduces overall social anxiety.
• Never comment on the student's social difference in front of the class. "You see, when we talk like this, others don't understand," said in front of peers exposes the student and reinforces their status as "different" in the eyes of the group. All feedback on social behaviors is given in individual interviews, in a supportive setting.

10. Create an inclusive classroom climate for autistic students

Beyond individual adaptations, the overall climate of the classroom is a determining factor for the social experience of autistic students. A classroom climate that values the diversity of functioning modes, prohibits mockery related to differences, and creates clear cooperation rituals is beneficial for all students — and particularly protective for autistic students.

Raising peer awareness of neurological difference — without ever targeting or "exposing" a specific student — can be done through general activities (discussions on neurodiversity, watching testimonials, role-playing different viewpoints) that enrich the relationship with the group as a whole. Some establishments have set up clubs or structured leisure spaces (board games, thematic clubs, digital gaming slots) that offer more accessible social interaction formats for autistic students — where the rules are explicit, the objectives clear, and the conversation more naturally oriented towards a shared interest rather than implicit social codes.

11. Practical cases: social interactions in real situations

Social interactions in autism during adolescence are often an invisible area of suffering — but also an area where targeted adaptations can radically change a student's daily experience. Understanding that the social difficulties of the autistic student are not a choice, a provocation, or a lack of effort, but a neurological reality that requires an adapted environment: this may be the most important transformation that this series of articles can produce. The following article delves into an even more invisible dimension of the academic difficulties of autistic students: subject-by-subject pedagogical adaptations.