Parallel Session Proceedings »
3.9.12 Wired from Birth: Technology and the Gifted Adolescent Brain
While many adults are confident users of technology, we are also keenly aware that we are not digital natives, as our children are. This gap — between knowing how to use tech and growing up tech-fluent in a plugged-in world — is the location of all our discomfort and worry about what all that screen time is doing to children, especially if they are gifted.
Parents, teachers, administrators, and counselors alike would benefit from a deeper understanding of what we know about the ways in which technology use impacts the way our children think and learn. Since we already know that gifted children experience the world more intensely than nongifted children, what does that mean for the impact of total technology immersion on their experience of the world? How do overexcitabilities, insatiable curiosity, and advanced abstract thinking and vocabulary inform or alter the way they interact with technology — and how does technology affect the way they interact with each other?
Because gifted children are, by definition, rare in the population, there is not a wide array of research about the intersection of these two topics. The best way to approach this, then, is to understand the latest research on technology and adolescent brains and to interpret that through the lens of what we know to be true about gifted children.
CommonSense Media, the American Psychological Association, and the Pew Research Foundation have all published findings in the past 2 years which reflect huge national samples to identify and explain trends in technology use by tweens and teens. These data also convey critical insights about how differences in our perceptions of technology affect the relationships between parents and children. Unfortunately, much of the information published about technology and children is worrisome if not alarmist, leaving adults more anxious but not necessarily better prepared to deal with this brave new world.
We will cover recent research describing the cognitive and social-emotional impacts of swimming around in all that technology, and offer both concrete suggestions and resources parents, teachers, and administrators can use to help them make informed decisions about use of technology in the home and in the classroom.