Foster Care Training

Our society is presently engaged in an unprecedented experiment as young people are exposed to an ever-increasing amount of information and fragmentation of attention (screen time, social media, video games, texting, etc). A study by the Kaiser Family Foundation in 2012 found that the average American teenager is sending/ receiving 100 texts a day, and spends in excess of 7 hours per day in front of some kind of screen. In this training, we’ll examine the role of all of this technology in the lives of young people and those who care for them. What do we think about all of this exposure to technology? How is it changing our relationships to ourselves, one another, and the world around us? How is it benefiting young people and how is it harmful to them? What do we know about the developmental impacts of all of this technology? How is it conditioning and changing ours brains and nervous systems? What do these changes lead towards? And more importantly, how can we strategically counter-act the impacts that are negative?

Training Objectives:

• Participants will explore the developmental impacts of increased exposure to technology (screen time, social media, video games, texting, etc.) for young people
• Participants will examine how exposure to technology changes young people’s relationships with self, others, and the world around them
• Participants will explore what a more mindful relationship with technology looks like
• Participants will examine how we can counter-act the more negative impacts of exposure to technology