Supporting Healthy Digital Media Use for Neurodivergent Kids

Many of our kids spend a LOT of time engaging on screens and with technology, and I don’t know about you, but for me it feels like this is an ever-changing, and fast-changing landscape, and one that can be hard to stay on top of. Whether we’re talking about assistive technology, videos, games, or social media, these forms of media continue to offer new ways of interacting, developing relationships, and even exploring identity, and this has added to the complexity of raising neurodivergent kiddos. So I invited Dr. Meryl Alper, a researcher on the social and cultural implications of communication technologies with a focus on disability, digital media, and children and families’ tech use to join me to talk about how we should be thinking about our kids’ relationship with screens and tech.

I reached out to Meryl after reading her new book, Kids Across the Spectrums: Growing Up Autistic in the Digital Age, which explores the often-misunderstood technology practices of young autistic people, as well as what it means to be “social” in a hypermediated society.

So that’s what we get into: the factors that influence a child’s relation to media, how digital media is creating spaces for kids to develop their identities online, and what we – parents, schools – should be doing to better educate kids on safely interacting with online communities and new technologies. We also talked about fandoms and how they have become a part of identity and belonging development, and why every parent needs to spend time understanding how their children are using and consuming media.