Impact of tech on kids/teens

A lot of kids these days have broken their way into the tech ecosystem and it has made a huge impact in their lives. In this article, I will be sharing inspiring stories of kids who have bridged their way into the tech ecosystem.

The Impact of tech on kids

Tech has played a huge impact on the life of so many kids/teens. These impacts include:

• Creativity and freedom of expression
• Socialization and relationship building
• Independence and empowerment
• Problem solving and perseverance
• Entrepreneurial spirit
• Learning enhancement
• In-demand job prep

Here is the story of a list of kids who are succeeding in the tech ecosystem.

Gitanjali Rao

Gitanjali Rao is a 16 years old author, speaker, community volunteer, science enthusiast, STEM promoter, and board member. She is a youth advocate for UNICEF. When Rao was younger, she heard of the water flint crisis and became interested in ways to measure the lead content in water. This led to her developing a device called Tethys based on carbon nanotubes that could send water quality information via Bluetooth. Rao developed an app 'Kindly' that uses Artificial Intelligence which prevents cyberbullying. She has won a lot of awards and challenges like Discovery Education 3M Young Scientist Challenge, United States Environmental Protection Agency President's Environmental Youth Award, Laureate of the Young Activists Summit at UN Geneva. IShe is hence, the first person to receive TIME magazine's Kid of the Year designation.

Opemipo Disu

Opemipo Disu is a 17 years old web developer, 2020 IBM Champion, JamStack developer, Agility CMS advocate. Opemipo is passionate about helping people with his available resources, by making the web more accessible via Youtube, Linkedln, and Instagram, He started his tech career at the age of 11, his Dad got him all the tools he needed for work back then. He loves making differences. He is currently working on a project to help stop cyberbullying. In 2019, Opemipo was nominated to be an IBM champion for Developers in 2020 and was later selected in January 2020. He works with languages under web development, software development, and AI technologies. He had his very first Laptop at the age of 5 and started contributing to tech communities at the age of 11. Since his bridge into the tech ecosystem, he has achieved a lot, He has inspired 10 thousand kids on 5 different continents around the world, he is widely recognized by the IBM community, He has won 5 awards since his break into tech as a developer advocate Apart from that, He has spoken at over 50 dev conferences.

Bereket Semagn

Bereket Semagn is a 14 years old developer, designer, and entrepreneur who has a passion for AI and how it can change the future moving forward. He loves creating products that help teams and individuals become productive and engaged. He started his tech journey in 2020 and since then he has been publicly noticed. He created a Lunar theme for VsCode which had +3k installations. he has built over 10 products in 2021.

Lella Violet Halloum

Lella is a 18 years old, British Lebanese, and is passionate about ‘tech for good’ & closing the digital divide. She is a frequent speaker, thought leader, and advocate for young people. She brings her personal mission to life by engaging thousands of students globally through tech events and social media and, with IBM's support, she creates student-led webinars that are entirely for, with, and by youth. Through her work, Lella strides to diversify the industry by creating more opportunities for young people, particularly underserved & underrepresented communities and those with non-traditional academic backgrounds, highlighting the important role young people play in tech and wider society. Lella has achieved a lot in the tech industry, from winning the 2021 Diana Award to winning Women of the Future Awards 2021: Young Star, to becoming the IBM champion.

Samaria Mehta

Samaira Mehta is an American coder and inventor. She is the founder and chief executive officer of CoderBunnyz. She began coding when she was 6 years old with her father as her teacher. She created the board game CoderBunnyz, with the help of her little brother, to teach other children how to code. Samaria speaks at workshops and conferences including at Microsoft, Intel, and Google. She spoke at the 2019 C2 Montréal Conference. Samaria aims to eliminate gender bias and increase the number of women in engineering. she has achieved a lot like the $2,500 second-place prize at Think Tank Learning's Pitchfest. She received a letter from former first lady Michelle Obama.

Tanmay Bakshi

Tanmay Bakshi is a 18 years old Canadian author, Machine Learning Developer, TED & Keynote Speaker, and media personality. Tanmay has been coding since he was 5 years old. To date, he has addressed over 200,000 people at international conferences, speaking about Computational Thinking, The 4th Industrial Revolution, Machine Learning, and Innovation. His goal to reach out to 100,000 aspiring coders to help them learn how to code has him holding countless workshops and seminars in schools and universities across the globe. Since his bridge into the tech ecosystem, he has won awards like the Twilio Doer Award, Knowledge Ambassador Award, Life Mentor Award, he’s a Global Goodwill Ambassador at LinkedIn, and an IBM Champion for Cloud.

Diana Ashktorab

Diana is an 9-year-old CodeNewbie who loves AI. Her goal is to create a robot someday to do children's homework so they can use their time for more creative stuff. She started her coding journey in August 2020, with Scratch and since then she has made a lot of amazing games.

Claire Charles

Yes, this is me, I am a 14 years old web3 developer, technical writer, and open-source contributor. I am passionate about contributing to open-source, public speaking, and coding. I began my coding journey in April 2020, and tho I haven't achieved much but I have a goal to bring more people into the tech ecosystem and to show them that they can achieve a lot at a young age.