TPP 356a: Supporting Healthy Digital Media Use for Neurodivergent Kids
episode
Full-Tilt Parenting: Strategies, Insights, and Connection for Parents Raising Neurodivergent Children
40 min
1 speaker
6 chapters
transcribed 14 hours ago
Transcript
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Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
What challenges do parents face with neurodivergent kids and screen time?
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Hey, it's Debbie. For the month of October, I'll be sharing some of my favorite past episodes relating to all things tech and screens. So every Friday this month, you'll find an episode on your Full Tilt Parenting feed on topics like gaming, internet rabbit holes, and navigating screen time. So if your child's relationship with technology is something you're grappling with, these are for you. I'm Debbie Reber and welcome to Tilt Parenting, a podcast featuring interviews and conversations aimed at inspiring, supporting and informing parents raising differently wired 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 kids. 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 is what we get into. A little bit more about my guest, Dr. Meryl Alper is an Associate Professor of Communication Studies at Northeastern University. In addition to the book we're talking about today, she's also the author of Digital Youth with Disabilities and the award-winning Giving Voice, Mobile Communication, Disability, and Inequality. Meryl draws on nearly 20 years of professional experience in the children's media industry as a researcher, strategist, and consultant with organizations such as Sesame Workshop, PBS Kids, Nickelodeon, and Disney. If your child, autistic or otherwise neurodivergent, regularly engages with screens and tech, you will get a lot out of this episode. All right, here is my conversation with Meryl.
Hey, Mara, welcome to the podcast. Thank you. Excited to be here. Yeah, I'm excited to have this conversation. This is super interesting. I think it ties so many things that we talk about in this parenting community. And you are an expert in such a unique way. Like we've talked about screen time from how to form healthy screen time habits and things like that. But we haven't really gotten into what's really going on, especially with autistic kids and their use of media and technologies. I want to talk all about your book. But before we do that, can you just give us a little bit more of your own personal introduction into the research and the work that you do and why you're so drawn to doing that work?
Yeah. So I started off my professional life in the children's media industry. And I say professional life, I mean, back in college, I worked on one of the first National Science Foundation grants to study digital media and kids. It was a new thing then. This is back in the early 2000s. and had the real gift of starting off having an internship that first summer. second summer in college in the education and research department at Sesame Workshop. So you sort of are starting with the best and the brightest. And that really infused everything that I've done going forward, thinking about how do we make the best possible media, the best possible choices around media for kids, knowing that they're going to be spending time with it.
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Chapters
6 chapters
1
What challenges do parents face with neurodivergent kids and screen time?
0:00–6:44
2
How does Dr. Meryl Alper’s career in children’s media shape her research?
6:44–14:13
3
What does the book *Kids Across the Spectrums* reveal about autistic identity online?
14:13–23:27
4
How do media platforms influence belonging and cultural identity for neurodivergent children?
23:27–31:36
5
What myths exist about technology isolating autistic kids and how are they debunked?
31:36–39:00
6
How can gaming and online communities support social connection for neurodivergent youth?
39:00–40:44
Speakers
1 identifiedMore from Full-Tilt Parenting: Strategies, Insights, and Connection for Parents Raising Neurodivergent Children
TPP 266a: A Conversation with Poet and Advocate LeDerick Horne
TPP 522: A Whole Child Approach to ADHD with Phil Boucher, M.D.
TPP 091a: A Conversation With Steve Silberman About His Book “Neurotribes”
TPP 521: A Conversation with Dr. Peter Gray About Restoring Childhood
TPP 253a: Advocate and Author Jonathan Mooney on Why Normal Sucks
TPP 520: Dr. Özgür Bolat on Why Rewards Backfire and the Real Science of Motivating Kids