by Selena Larson

Teens have always been stereotyped as massive consumers of technology, but in some cases they're also the ones advancing it. Young people have long been avid early adopters, and not just of applications like Snapchat and Instagram.

The Internet and mobile devices have democratized access to technology across all age groups—and while some teens may use it primarily to post selfies and hook up, many others have become self-reliant and self-taught innovators. I set out to meet some of these imaginative teens—and now you can, too.

Pressman has been programming since he was 11, after discovering that that people build video and computer games by coding them.

He has since taken on numerous projects as a lead programmer or electrical engineer—most recently Art Squared, a device Pressman and other students built on the open-source electronic-prototyping platform Arduino. It's an assistive painting device for people with cerebral palsy that lets people move a paintbrush across a canvas with a remote joystick.

Pressman and the six other teenagers who built Art Squared are part of a youth development organization called MOUSE that works with students across the country to learn and create with technology.

Last year, MOUSE partnered with United Cerebral Palsy of New York City so that students could develop projects geared to help people with the disease. After talking with an artist who was unable to paint due to her condition, Pressman and his team decided to build Art Squared to benefit artists everywhere.

His team's next step will be to make the project plans available as open source material sometime in the next few months so that anyone can build Art Squared. Its construction cost is only $150, significantly less than other assistive devices. “We’re just going to see if we can work on it after school on a Thursday or something,” Pressman says. “We really want to make it accessible to everyone.”

Pressman plans to pursue a degree in game design at the Rochester Institute of Technology, and eventually to start his own game design studio.

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