17 year old online friends etc.!

[lennonj]

My 17 year old son has recently made some new friends, through Instagram and also yubo i think, the problem is it's becoming very time consuming for him!
A bit out backstory, he has Aspergers (at mainstream school and doesn't need support there)and he's quite immature, he does have what he considers to be a couple of friends but rarely sees anyone outside of school. He would like a girlfriend but in real life, he's quite socially awkward and so as much as he'd like a big group of friends, he doesn't have this.
He's very secretive and doesn't chat to us about things that are going on his life, for example I don't know the names of anyone in his class.
So...he's made some female friends online, which in one way is good because he's getting experience talking to girls, these girls have issues (after much cajoling he told me this, think mh) and they live in the US. They often chat on something like a FaceTime groupbut it's always late at night for hours, he's even been heard to be in the phone at 5am! Since he's made these friends he's been even more distant from us, he generally spends as much time as possible in his bedroom, he's been rude and more ungrateful, disrespectful than usual. When i asked him to do homework last weekend i heard one of the girls say 'you don't need to do it '.

Well done if you're still following this! I'm just feeling that these friends are encouraging his isolation, making it even more difficult to motivate him to do school work and keeping him up half the night. The last few nights I've made him putr his phone outside his room at 11pm, which he's been really argumentative about but i can't trust him to leave his phone alone at night. But I'm wondering am I treating him too young? I always feel like he's very vulnerable in friendship, he's so gullible and will do whatever anyone else says rather than what we say.
I feel like our relationship has gone way off track and i feel so negative towards him because he's so bloody rude and ungrateful for the amount I do for him, how do i make this better?

[lennonj]

Bump

[katkaz99]

Hi. Not quite the same but my 17 year old son is lonely and really struggling to make friends despite trying all the usual channels. Joined a musical theatre group and various courses and events he finds related to media and other things he's interested in. He has also made some "friends" on Instagram which is fine but he's constantly getting upset as he just would like to meet to do something normal and there seems to be a lot of game playing going on. Plans being cancelled at the last minute etc. It breaks my heart to see him get so upset and think he won't ever have any proper friends to do things with. It's very hard at 17 to find new friends it seems. I imagine if your son is anywhere near in the same boat, they are very easily manipulated by these girls? Mine can be rude and moody but most of the time it turns out it's because someone has said or done something on line to upset him. Sorry there's no real point to my reply other than that I do empathise. I wish it was easy for them to find other lonely teenagers in the same boat who they could have "normal" friendships with but there doesn't seem to be an easy way to do that!