As a person with High-Functional Autism (or HFA), I would like to share with you how I got my social skills improved in such an exponential rate that I have never expected to happen, but I am humble and glad that it did.

There is this popular animated TV cartoon show from Hasbro Studios by the name of “My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic” (I know this is the kind of show meant for young girls to begin with. However, I ask that you please bear with me here). I have heard rumours from all over that the cartoon itself actually improved social skills exponentially for people with ASD. I was unsure if this was true at first to begin with. So out of curiosity, I watched a few episodes in between the series that caught my attention when it came to references from other popular culture and media. After I did that, I got a bit more interested with the series in general and I so decided to watch the series from the very beginning. Boy, was I in for a ride.

First, let’s get some things straight. As an adult male, some episodes in the first season were a bit girly for my taste, but that still did not stop me from watching the show, because from the start of Season 2, everything became a lot more tolerable to me. Ever since I started watching the entire series from the beginning, I did notice that the show did help me learn a lot about how to deal with real-life social problems while at the same time, also enhanced my social skills. How it was able to do that was because of the very fact that the writing team who wrote the episodes, did an amazingly well done job with scripting out real-life social problems that we do face in reality.

For a good example from this, we all know that eye contact is one of the biggest problems that people like me with ASD suffer from, right? Well, that can easily be remedied with the show’s simple and elegant art style. Everything is visually graceful to behold. The art style even reminds me a lot of the anime art style. Where the visual art style also helps here with eye contact are the eyes of the characters in the show. They are appealingly big, and in a good way! With a show like this one that started off with Lauren Faust (known for other cartoon shows like “The PowerPuff Girls” and “Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends” for her visual and writing involvement), it was no surprise to me that she was able to come up with a simply elegant art style that is very easy to the eyes of the viewer. And I thank her for the hard work, dedication and effort she has put together, for the fact that she rebooted the My Little Pony TV line as the 4th Generation into something as remarkable as “My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic”.

In conclusion, I highly recommend watching “My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic” from Season One, all the way to the most recent episode to anyone with ASD or not. There is always something there for everyone. It certainly helped me with my social skills, so why not give the show a chance? You may be surprised as to what the show in its entirety offers.

In fact, here is the link to my Two Minute Review on the show (prior to the upcoming Season 5) for a quick glimpse: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=so_Kkf7CUNI

Thank you for reading my story.

By Jonathan from Bowmanville