Dear Dr. Wes and Gabe: I read your book on ADHD and it was really helpful. You suggest using technology to help teens and young adults organize themselves to learn, but our experience is the opposite. If we give our middle-school son a computer or tablet, he doesn’t do his work. He gets online or plays a game. We have to stand over him to be sure he’s on task. This year our son’s school started using a more tech-focused classroom. So far this has turned out just as badly.

Double Take columnists Gabe Magee and Dr. Wes Crenshaw

Wes: I was such an early tech adopter that a 1981 model of my first computer is now in the Smithsonian. My daughter began using her own personal iPad in middle school the first week they came out and it saved her academic career in much the way Gabe describes below. Yet my thinking on this has evolved since the book came out, and I began hearing the same concern you’ve expressed.

So here’s my revised position: Technology is super useful for everyone it’s super useful for. Everyone else needs to find the organizational and educational system that works best for him or her. So in this regard, I think we’ll soon realize that schools have taken the technology fad a bridge too far — or maybe several bridges.

Just as we all have preferred learning styles (auditory, visual, tactile), we all have preferred ways of interacting with content. Some kids are engrossed with the interactive style of online learning. Others hate it. And by “hate,” I mean they cringe and get angry when I bring up any tech-related learning system. I almost can’t believe that all teens, raised on video games, Tumblr, Twitter and YouTube, aren’t jumping at the every chance to carry that over into the classroom. But far more kids than you’d expect feel exactly as you do.

My wife, a Kansas Teacher of the Year finalist, began incorporating more technology in her classroom this fall. Shortly thereafter, she held a class discussion with her seventh graders about how schools and culture have changed since her students’ parents were in school. One girl lamented this increase in technology noting, “I want a teacher to teach me, not a computer.”

I’ve heard that sentiment echoed over and over. Your concern is one of many reasons why.

Gabe: It’s a simple fact that our world is becoming more wired. Classrooms five years from now are going to look even more different than they do today, and for good reason. Devices such as iPads make teaching and learning so much more efficient and organized than conventional methods.

I personally experienced this when I started using an iPad this final year of high school. As someone who is naturally challenged when it comes to organization, not worrying about finding and handing in any more crumpled papers was a godsend. I love it.

It is foolish, however, to assume that iPads are purely advantageous. Like anything else, they have drawbacks as well. A plethora of apps, games and websites are easily accessible from any device connected to Wi-Fi and there’s no incentive for any young adult to not download and use them, even during class. The risk of getting caught is relatively low — just tap the home key twice and you’re clear — and the reward (floating away from this boring lecture) is high. I know from personal experience that it is the rare student with an iPad who hasn’t used distracting apps during class.

It won’t solve the problem completely, but you might want to be sure your child doesn’t have unfettered access to an iTunes account on any tablet used at school. Another method is to impose punishment for using distraction-causing apps before homework. Yet it remains hard to regulate what a child does on his or her iPad without restricting it completely.

While these distractions hurt more than they help, the tech situation in schools isn’t all doom and gloom. To be an efficient, organized student, I prefer having these devices to not having them. Without mine, I wouldn’t have been able to coordinate multiple projects, write several essays at a time and generate more than a few newspaper columns.

— Wes Crenshaw, Ph.D., ABPP, is author of “I Always Want to Be Where I’m Not: Successful Living with ADD & ADHD.” Learn about his writing and practice at dr-wes.com. Gabe Magee is a Bishop Seabury Academy senior. Send your confidential 200-word question to ask@dr-wes.com. Double Take opinions and advice are not a substitute for psychological services.