Helping our Teens and Families: What Clinicians Need to Know about Digital Media Use

About The Workshop

Participants will review basic tasks of adolescent development and learn the normative problems/challenges of adolescents. Instructors will elaborate the bi-directional impact of digital media use on adolescent development and outline the types of help that youth and families show up seeking, as regards to digital media, namely:

• Digital media forming a family battleground
• Internet and digital media device “addiction”
• ICTs and bullying, teasing, harassment
• The challenges of unclear digital media ethics, evolving norms and online “bad play”
• The need for critical media literacy with the rise of the Internet as a primary source of information/decision-making
• The good and ill of social media (around status and connection)

Participants will be able to summarize and highlight how clinician understanding of the pervasive impact of digital media use can assist in their work with adolescents and their families. Instructors will assist clinicians in diagnosing specific disorders that may arise as a result of social media challenges including Depressive Disorders, Anxiety Disorders and Suicidal Behavior Disorder as well as provide an opportunity to apply the materials to a current case and share that in a group.

Learning Objectives

• Understand several key ways in which challenges around ICTs and digital media use can“show up” in the clinician's office; in particular, as it relates to accompanying diagnoses of anxiety and/or depression.
• Apply the information on challenges related to digital media to their own clinical.
• Identify and list the key terms and concepts related to critical digital media literacy.
• Explain the fundamental tasks of adolescent identity development.
• Elaborate the key characteristics of digital media and digital media use.
• Articulate several key ways in which the characteristics of digital media use can affect healthy adolescent development and explain why the impact is bi-directional.
• Learn specific techniques and utilize resources to improve clinical expertise in helping to work with the challenges associated with ICTs and digital media use.

About the Presenters

Michael Simon, LMFT

Michael Simon earned his M.S.in Clinical Psychology in 1996 from San Francisco State University and his M.A. in 1990 in Religious Studies from Temple University. He has worked in Private Practice in New Orleans and Oakland, CA since 1987 focusing on adults and couples as well as families and adolescents. Michael has a dual specialization in: a) parenting adolescents, blended family dynamics and parenting through separation and divorce and; b) focus on familial adjustment involving the treatment and management of clients with mood disorders and/or dual-diagnosis. He has specialized training in crisis management theory and practice (including extensive ICISF-sponsored training in Critical Incident Stress Management in general and specific training in School Crisis Management). Michael has served as Middle and Upper School Counselor at Isidore Newman School since 2015. Michael has extensive teaching/training/public speaking experience, statewide and nationally. He has worked with over 100 schools locally and around the country since 1998, providing consultation and workshops on a broad range of topics on adolescent and pre-adolescent development. Michael is a member of the American Association of Marriage and Family Therapists; Louisiana Association of Marriage and Family Therapists; Learning Disabilities Association of America; International Critical Incident Stress Foundation; CHADD.

Mimi Ryan, LPC

3.0  CE clock hours in Diagnosis.  No NBCC credits available.

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