Under the Influence (with Jo Piazza) - Don't Spy On Your Kids' Phones with Dr. Devorah Heitner

00:00:00.000 It is the day after Halloween, and I gotta tell you, I'm feeling a little rough. I am.

00:00:16.960 I'm so tired. I chased three six-year-old boys down the street while they stopped at

00:00:24.280 every house in Center City, Philadelphia for candy. So I'm tired. I am tired. But you know

00:00:30.100 what? I'm still making the podcast. Because today's episode is one I have been dying to get

00:00:36.120 to. Dying to. And I've gotten so many notes from many, many of you who want to talk about this

00:00:42.080 subject. We all want to make sure that our kids are safe online. But how do we even start to do

00:00:47.600 that. The truth is that it's complicated. It's really freaking complicated, and it changes every

00:00:55.360 day. If you've ever asked yourself any of the following questions, then this episode is probably

00:01:01.160 for you. Is my kid addicted to their phone? Will my kid's online mistakes haunt them forever?

00:01:09.420 Which apps should I be worried about? Should I monitor my kids on social media? Is someone going

00:01:16.460 to send my kid inappropriate photos? Should I be talking to them about sexting? Today's guest is

00:01:23.840 going to answer most of those questions for us. It is Dr. Devorah Heitner, and she's the author

00:01:29.520 of Growing Up in Public, Coming of Age in a Digital World. I had so many questions for Devorah. One

00:01:36.300 of them, since my kids are still so little, is when should you get your kids a phone? And they're

00:01:41.220 already asking. They're four and six. The baby can't talk, but sometimes she just looks at me

00:01:45.680 and I feel like she's asking with her eyes.

00:01:47.760 So we're going to get to that.

00:01:49.460 See, at the end of the day, this is all on us.

00:01:53.840 The tech companies are not here to protect our kids

00:01:56.100 or to model good digital citizenship and habits.

00:01:59.540 They're here to make money.

00:02:01.400 We have to be the role models.

00:02:03.380 We have to set the guidelines and to start the conversations,

00:02:06.480 no matter how awkward those are going to be.

00:02:09.680 And trust me, I think it's going to get kind of awkward.

00:02:13.220 You are all going to want to sit down for this one.

00:02:15.680 Or take a walk. Or, you know, that's always nice, too. It's up to you. Your body, your choice.

00:02:27.440 Hi. Hi. It is so good to have you on. I am obsessed with your book. The digital world

00:02:36.800 is my greatest fear. After cars. I'm terrified of cars, but after cars. Growing up in the digital

00:02:45.000 world terrifies me for my three children, who are still very little, but also know how to access

00:02:51.980 YouTube already. And I have a million questions for you. I first found your book because you

00:03:00.200 talked to my friend Jessica Gross at the New York Times, and the headline of her piece was

00:03:07.080 the fight for your kids' brains has already begun. I mean, our kids are watching us, right? And so

00:03:15.380 they see how often we reach for our phones. Your toddler probably brings you your phone from the

00:03:19.160 other room if you leave it behind because they see how incredibly attached you are. And touch

00:03:25.020 screens are super intuitive. So kids can start at a much younger age. You don't need to know how to

00:03:28.680 read and use a keyboard, which was a huge barrier for little kids, you know, with computing and

00:03:33.740 laptops, you know, even until like 10 years ago. But now we're in the sort of touchscreen world

00:03:38.620 where you just touch it and it goes. And if you've ever seen a little toddler or preschooler

00:03:42.760 try to touch a magazine and get it to swipe, it shows you how incredibly intuitive it is.

00:03:48.640 The fact that we expose our kids to so much of it terrifies me, but I also don't know how to

00:03:55.080 back away from it what guardrails I can put up early or what I even have what I even have

00:04:03.300 available to me and so I'm curious that is what that's one of the big things that I wanted to ask

00:04:08.320 you a huge thing we can do is really think about our own surveillance and our own sharing about

00:04:18.040 our kids right one thing you can do when we're thinking about our own social media are we making

00:04:23.700 sure we get our kids consent before we share images or videos of our children, or if they're

00:04:28.920 too young to ask for consent, are we considering the later potential cringe factor and making sure

00:04:35.700 we're not sharing anything that someone might tease them for, or that they might really be

00:04:40.360 resentful of us later for sharing? You know, when I think about all your conversations about

00:04:45.540 influencer families, I think every family in some sense is an influencer family. If mom or dad is

00:04:51.120 on Facebook or Instagram. Yeah, absolutely. And I think that all the time about the pictures and

00:04:58.820 videos that I post of my kids, I post way less than I used to after working on this podcast,

00:05:06.660 mostly out of fear. And yet there's still information out there about my kids because

00:05:14.940 I do talk about them and I'm a writer who talks about my life. And I think about little,

00:05:20.900 I think about little things. When my daughter goes on her first date or my son goes on his

00:05:27.560 first date and someone is able to Google what I wrote 15 years earlier about how hard it was

00:05:34.800 to potty train them. Is that something I would want someone finding out when I was going on my

00:05:39.940 first date? I mean, they knew nothing about me, right? Right. And the whole idea of being able

00:05:48.500 to present yourself to new people in your own life is so important, especially when I think

00:05:53.080 we're teenagers or emerging adults. But really throughout my life, I've wanted to have some

00:05:57.860 control over that way of presenting myself. And we all choose to present ourselves differently

00:06:01.880 in different contexts. And what social media does is it kind of smashes all those contexts together,

00:06:08.000 including, you know, including for us, right? Like we might post and there's like a mix of

00:06:11.540 our professional, personal family folks following us. And then it's like, wait, how do I speak to

00:06:16.760 these very different audiences. Whereas if I was like catching up with my family on Thanksgiving

00:06:21.500 and they were like, how is your book tour? I'm going to tell different stories than if like one

00:06:25.460 of my writer friends says, how is your book tour? Right. Like those are different conversations,

00:06:29.360 but on my, you know, Instagram or LinkedIn, I'm going to present it in this kind of broad way

00:06:35.040 that hopefully is like, okay for everyone. And frankly, less interesting. Like we can be less

00:06:39.720 interesting when we're trying to speak to multiple contacts. Like if I'm having a one-to-one

00:06:43.580 conversation or a one to few conversations, you know, about what's going on in the world in all

00:06:48.980 different contexts. It's going to be a more interesting conversation if I'm narrowing that

00:06:53.420 focus and if there's a high level of trust. And when you go to social media, you don't have a

00:06:58.740 high level of trust. Someone might screenshot and try to cancel you or whatever. You have to

00:07:02.220 kind of be more careful. You've been visiting a lot of schools and you have an older child than

00:07:09.180 than my kids when you talk to kids about what their parents have posted how do they feel like

00:07:16.420 what do they open up to you about because i think i think my friends who have kids who are tweens

00:07:22.060 now they never actually hear it from their kids but their kids will talk to someone like you

00:07:27.540 so there's a real sense of betrayal sometimes or a sense of feeling less safe at home one of the

00:07:36.420 things that I've been saying for the longest, really more than 10 years since I started speaking

00:07:41.540 publicly about this topic, was that we should ask our kids permission before we share. And I'm a

00:07:47.280 reformed sharanter as well. Until my kid was in third grade, I was sharing him and not always

00:07:52.360 asking permission. So I'm right here with you. I'm not here to parent shame anyone. But I think

00:07:57.320 what I learned is that kids do feel more inhibited at home. You take a picture of your fourth or

00:08:03.120 fifth grader in their PJs with their stuffed animals, and maybe they put away their stuffed

00:08:06.500 animals when they have their friends over for a sleepover, and you just kind of exposed a part

00:08:10.960 of their private life, that's really not yours to expose. And then when they get on the school bus,

00:08:17.320 some of their friends may have seen that image through their parents, and they might get teased,

00:08:22.700 and that might interrupt their, you know, fourth grade street cred that they were in their footie

00:08:26.720 Star Wars pajamas or had their stuffed animals. And the last thing you want to do is make your

00:08:30.780 kid grow up too fast and put away their stuffed animals for good. But by exposing them to their

00:08:35.440 peers, you might have just done that. Or your kid loves to belt out show tunes at home in their

00:08:40.080 underpants. Why would you want to inhibit that awesome behavior? That's great. But if you share

00:08:45.300 the video, you might be inhibiting that behavior because your kid will experience potentially

00:08:50.680 feeling exposed. Family and home should be a safe space. And that's why I'm so concerned about

00:08:58.540 influencers who are not having any boundaries. And I think most of us who are sharing on social

00:09:02.780 would say we do have boundaries. We don't share pictures of our kids we think would be embarrassing.

00:09:07.740 And that's true. But I love the example of the footie pajamas, because why would you think that

00:09:11.720 be embarrassing for a fourth grader? But you don't know what image they're trying to project at

00:09:16.020 school and how that goes with the way they see themselves. So that's why, you know, I would

00:09:20.600 either not take the picture at all or at least ask before I share it or just keep it in the family

00:09:25.380 is a good compromise. Sometimes like maybe there are some sweet pictures we want to take. I think

00:09:30.480 taking pictures of people sleeping, for example, is really violating. But I know a lot of parents

00:09:34.380 love those pictures. Like if you're going to take them, at least keep them in your immediate family

00:09:38.780 if you're going to take them at all. But would you want your kids taking pictures of you sleeping

00:09:42.060 and putting that on TikTok? Like, here's my mom sleeping on TikTok. You know, you're the sounds

00:09:46.160 of the CPAP machine. Like, no, you would not want that. You would feel very violated by that. So I

00:09:50.740 think it's important to ask yourself if the equivalent picture was taken by someone in your

00:09:55.600 family, it's you and your PJs and your partner took the picture. Would you want that on the

00:09:59.820 internet without permission? You would not. Right. So I think it's just important that we ask and

00:10:03.960 that if kids are too young to ask, we err on the side of sharing less or, you know, if in doubt,

00:10:10.420 don't share it out. If you think that eight-year-old's dance moves are cool now, but she

00:10:14.140 might cringe later, maybe just again, keep it in the family or keep it on a smaller share

00:10:19.040 because that being circumspect will never hurt you.

00:10:24.480 Your kid will never be like,

00:10:25.380 I'm so mad that you didn't share that with everybody, right?

00:10:28.840 Because here's the thing.

00:10:29.620 If your kid then becomes a dancer

00:10:30.960 and wants that video and you have it, 0.53

00:10:33.360 she can make her own documentary 0.97

00:10:34.700 about her own life as a dancer

00:10:36.220 and put that eight-year-old video in there

00:10:38.460 and be like, this is part of my story.

00:10:40.360 Look at these moves I was busting when I was eight.

00:10:43.200 But she's not going to be mad at you

00:10:44.400 that you didn't share it.

00:10:46.400 So I think that's really important.

00:10:47.580 And then the other thing it does

00:10:48.440 it teaches them that's how they should behave with their friends so if you ask before you share

00:10:53.360 they realize oh when i take videos when my friends come over i should not be posting these on youtube

00:10:57.580 without checking with my friends and that's really important so that you're you're modeling

00:11:02.460 a boundary and you're modeling a boundary that when somebody asks them frankly for a nude one

00:11:06.440 day which is going to happen very likely if you have kids that are growing up and they might have

00:11:14.020 There's better boundaries if they've grown up in a consent-based culture being able to say no.

00:11:19.900 Absolutely. And I think the big message that I love sharing with parents is that so much of this is up to us.

00:11:28.440 How we model, how we use the phone, how we take pictures, how we share.

00:11:34.820 They have no one else to look to, I mean, until their friends start using this.

00:11:40.360 but when they're as young as my kids, to see how to do, how to act with these things.

00:11:50.460 But I think about my childhood all the time, and I saw my parents reading newspapers.

00:11:56.180 So that kind of thing made me want to be a journalist, same as I saw them watching the nightly news.

00:12:02.800 I could see what they were consuming. But with the phones, our kids just see us staring at a screen. And I think that's what scares me so much, because they just see us holding and looking at this device, and they don't know what we're doing with it, unless we're explaining it to them, unless we're very active in talking about what we're doing and how we use this thing.

00:12:28.520 Absolutely. I mean, we heard our parents on the phone as well. And so we learned a lot about

00:12:33.020 communication and negotiation and navigating conflict. And our kids are watching us thumb

00:12:38.460 it out. But unless we explain a decision like, oh, I'm having a hard time understanding this

00:12:44.380 person and we're both getting frustrated, so I'm going to call them later and we're going to work

00:12:47.860 it out. Or this is really big, heavy news. I don't want to lob this news over the text transom to

00:12:55.660 this person and then leave them to deal with it alone. So I'm going to wait till I see them in

00:12:58.940 person to share. Those are the kinds of communication decisions we're making all the

00:13:03.440 time with our experienced adult brains, with all our history of socialization. And if we don't

00:13:08.400 explain that to our kids, unlike how we heard our parents on the phone, and I often picked up and

00:13:13.160 heard both sides, but I certainly heard one side of every conversation that ever happened in our

00:13:16.740 home. It was a small house. My parents were loud. I heard those conversations very clearly, at least

00:13:22.060 one side of them. And so I learned things from that. And we're not doing enough to mentor our

00:13:28.000 kids on these communication strategies, and especially how to have empathy for the other

00:13:32.260 people we're communicating with, remembering there's human beings on the other end of these

00:13:37.540 screens. Yes, yes, yes. And that's what you talk a lot about. It's mentoring over monitoring your

00:13:46.700 kids. A lot of people talk about surveillance and spying on their kids' devices. But if we're

00:13:53.820 setting up those guardrails, if we are a good digital literacy mentor going into this, then

00:14:01.540 do you have to surveil? Do you have to monitor as much?

00:14:06.780 Ideally, we're not monitoring very much, and we're monitoring more in a way that's

00:14:11.600 collaborative. So say you get your kid a new device or they're in a new space, you're working

00:14:17.140 on it with them. Like maybe with Roblox, you're listening while they're playing with their friends

00:14:22.340 without headphones and you might give them a few notes. Like I've occasionally held up a note on a

00:14:26.740 flash card to my kid, like, hey, use a nicer tone with your friend. But, you know, I don't yell at

00:14:30.800 him because that'd be embarrassing because the friends could hear. But especially when he was

00:14:33.720 home in the early days of the pandemic, sort of playing more and I could hear the friends and

00:14:39.220 hear my kid. I could sometimes give feedback. And that's very different than covertly spying

00:14:44.420 on our kids. You know, you don't want to just mirror all their texts or their geolocation to

00:14:48.820 you without them knowing, because that's just going to drive your kid underground. They're

00:14:53.660 going to get so focused on hiding from you that it's going to likely interfere with the relationship

00:14:58.240 and their ability to hum to you if there is a situation in social media, on a group text,

00:15:05.760 in a game that is concerning where they need your help. So I do think, you know, some of mentoring

00:15:13.000 can consist of monitoring, like say your kid gets a new phone, maybe you sit down and look at that

00:15:16.780 group text with them a little together or look at their, some of their early texts. Certainly I would

00:15:20.880 be very involved if my kid was getting a phone at nine, 10, 11, 12, and figuring out with them who

00:15:25.560 their contacts should be, right? Kids, you know, in elementary school probably shouldn't have any

00:15:30.320 contacts that at least one of their parent caregivers, you know, doesn't know, right? Like

00:15:34.360 they shouldn't, like in elementary school, why should your kid be in contact with someone that

00:15:38.040 nobody, no adult in the family knows? Like in high school, yes, of course, my kid's on the debate

00:15:42.240 team. I don't know everybody, right? But that's a very different scenario, you know, at 14, 15 than

00:15:47.340 it is at 10. So we want to start our kids with contacts that we know. So that would involve like

00:15:52.000 sitting down with them, making their contacts list, et cetera. So I guess you could say that

00:15:57.240 that's monitoring. But what I'm opposed to and what I think is really insidious is going kind

00:16:02.040 of all NSA on your kid having an app on their device where everything gets mirrored to you

00:16:07.060 which is incredibly invasive it also frankly is going to give you PTSD while you relive middle

00:16:12.660 school you don't need to see everything it's going to be a lot of time for you that you probably

00:16:18.380 don't have and your kid is going to focus on how they can get around that if you're monitoring to

00:16:23.780 that degree and if you're doing it covertly I also have to ask like what is your end game like

00:16:28.360 what will you do if you see something problematic if you're covertly monitored

00:16:31.900 like what's your plan how will you talk to them about what you've seen it will no longer be covert

00:16:36.740 yeah that's oh gosh this feels so far away for me and yet it's not it's not it's coming for me

00:16:43.880 it is i know that and what about things like the 360 life life 360 i'm just finding out what life

00:16:52.800 360 is. It's one of those tracking apps. And what are your thoughts on putting those on kids' phones?

00:16:59.840 Some families like it and they say it, you know, makes them feel closer. I find it creepy and

00:17:06.200 invasive. I'm like a very sort of privacy loving Gen X person. I don't see why anyone should want

00:17:12.200 to track my location. I mean, for me, a litmus test would be if your kid's romantic partner

00:17:16.380 someday wanted them to get this and, you know, wanted them to get a watch or a phone to track

00:17:21.040 their location, would you find that loving or creepy? Well, I would go to creepy. And I think

00:17:27.180 tracking our kids' location feels creepy and also adds to anxiety sometimes because people find,

00:17:35.220 you know, if somebody somehow like goes dark on the map or their phone dies, it like actually

00:17:39.180 adds to anxiety or you live in a dense area and a kid goes into someplace, but it turns out to be

00:17:44.380 like the adjacent place. But I do think that it's worth thinking about like, wait, why would I want

00:17:50.480 to track my kid's location. And any of the instances I can think of, I would rather,

00:17:55.700 you know, have him let me know where he's going and also just feel like it's also okay as he gets

00:18:01.480 older for me to not know every second where he is. Like if he's out with friends, you know,

00:18:05.560 in our community or, you know, whatever, going out for like pizza and then a movie, I don't know if

00:18:11.040 I need to know exactly, like, did they leave the pizza place yet? Are they at the movies yet? Why

00:18:15.100 didn't they get to the movies? Like, oh, maybe they decided to stay and just keep talking over

00:18:18.640 pizza. Like, is that OK? Can I let that be? Like, do I have to text him and say, like, why didn't

00:18:23.020 you go to the movies yet? Like, at what point does it become invasive and controlling? And knowing

00:18:27.780 that I'm already a really anxious parent and that I struggle with anxiety, I think it would add to

00:18:34.120 my anxiety, not decrease it. Of course it would. Of course it would. Because so much can go wrong

00:18:41.440 with these tracking apps. We're going to take a quick break here. When we get back, we'll talk

00:18:46.980 about how our phones are making all of us, especially our kids, more anxious and even a

00:18:52.380 little bit sick. And we're also going to dive into a really tricky topic, how to talk to your kids

00:18:57.980 about sexting. Oh, I know. But it's a real thing. It's a real thing.

00:19:16.980 And we are back.

00:19:18.420 We're back with author and digital safety expert,

00:19:21.440 Devorah Heitner.

00:19:23.840 I think we do need to talk with kids

00:19:26.060 and let them observe for themselves

00:19:27.700 with particular apps,

00:19:30.020 maybe with particular devices.

00:19:32.200 When this is making your life better, it's great.

00:19:35.020 When it's helping your learning,

00:19:36.260 helping your friendships,

00:19:37.700 being fun and entertaining.

00:19:39.340 But when it's taking away from things that we need to do,

00:19:42.040 like sleep, for example,

00:19:44.440 then it's not great.

00:19:45.340 And we all need to take a break. And so kids are pretty good at noticing that over time.

00:19:51.780 I had a lot of kids tell me about apps that they quit. TikTok was the most frequently quit app.

00:19:57.280 That seems to be a love or hate app. There's not a lot of neutrality on TikTok among teenagers.

00:20:02.040 Many of them love it and some of them loved it enough that they felt like they had to quit.

00:20:06.740 How did the kids feel when they quit? What did they tell you about that experience?

00:20:10.480 it. They could get their work done. They could get sleep and they they didn't miss it as much

00:20:15.320 as they thought. Right. Those short videos, you know, coming at you in the and a lot of kids use

00:20:21.340 the term addicting, which I think is so interesting because, of course, addictive is the sort of

00:20:25.900 correct word. But addictive is kind of passive, like a substance is addictive. TikTok is addictive,

00:20:31.940 right? Addicting almost feels like it's coming and grabbing you and like making you get addicted.

00:20:36.320 so even though i resist that word a lot because clinically you know i have a phd in media studies

00:20:41.300 not psychology i'm not qualified to say anyone's addicted um and really only video games are you

00:20:46.940 know in the dsm like there is an addiction i think in the dsm for video games um i don't think

00:20:51.860 there's tiktok addiction in there but a lot of parents and kids will use the word addicted or

00:20:57.080 addicting and they don't necessarily mean that they have a clinical addiction or that they've

00:21:02.480 been diagnosed because they probably haven't. But it does feel like it's interfering with their

00:21:07.100 life. And what I would say to parents is your kid doesn't need a clinical addiction to feel like

00:21:11.540 it's interfering with their life. And that, you know, you do want to intervene if you or your

00:21:15.880 child feels like your devices are interfering with your life. And I have felt that at times,

00:21:20.140 like I've, I've added screen time to my phone to try to encourage myself to go to bed. And

00:21:24.300 obviously I have the password. I'm not going to, you know, if I want to sort of cheat on screen

00:21:28.240 time and go around it, I can just turn it the heck off. But it's a good reminder and cue for

00:21:34.440 me, especially, you know, I'm on my book tour right now. I'm on these late, late nights. Like

00:21:38.540 I need to get my rest. And if I'm going to be checking data or even hearing live from people,

00:21:44.920 because nobody knows what time zone I'm in right now. So people are like writing to me and I might

00:21:48.680 be somewhere where it's, you know, midnight and they might not know that. But I don't need to

00:21:53.060 have it on all the time, right? And it's so important to be aware and protective of your

00:21:58.240 own rest and downtime. I love that kids are recognizing that it's not good for them. And

00:22:06.060 I think parents saying the things that they feel aren't good for them on their phones is also

00:22:11.660 really important. Again, it's modeling. It's modeling and mentoring. The kids will really

00:22:16.800 take in the things that we're doing. What are your general nonjudgmental recommendations for

00:22:24.560 when kids should get a phone? Kids should get a phone when their parents need them to have one

00:22:32.160 in a lot of ways and when they're doing more independent things in the world. So for us,

00:22:36.480 it was when our son was going to be home alone more and we didn't have a house phone. So it's

00:22:40.420 a very pragmatic safety issue. Now, you don't have to get your kid a phone and let them have

00:22:45.160 it all the time, right? Or you don't have to get them a phone that does all the things. There's

00:22:48.800 some starter phones on the market that just text, which is kind of great. Like giving your kid a

00:22:53.520 browser and access to downloading social apps and games does really complicate things. But we do

00:23:00.060 want to think about how we're treating phones like they're so necessary. We've got to be connected

00:23:05.260 all the time. And if we can model that it's okay to be unreachable some of the time, our kids will

00:23:10.320 also recognize. I've had 10-year-olds say to me, is it okay if sometimes I just don't feel like

00:23:15.700 being on my phone because their friends are trying to reach them? And I'm thinking,

00:23:19.320 yeah, if you can't take a break in fifth grade, you're never going to feel like you can take a

00:23:23.500 break. Wow. 10-year-olds. 10-year-olds saying, is it okay to be on reach? I might just return my

00:23:32.360 phone off and take a break. And I'm like, uh-huh. Yeah, it is totally okay. Please go outside and

00:23:36.520 Go play. Go play. Go play. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think being unreachable is also wonderful.

00:23:43.100 I mean, let's not even bring up being unreachable once you start dating as a teenager. Please be

00:23:48.560 as unreachable as possible. Well, I think with dating, one of the tricky things that kids have

00:23:54.720 to negotiate is what is my expected reachability with my sweetie, you know, for dating because

00:24:00.820 kids will text each other all day at school. And so kids need to learn to set boundaries,

00:24:05.140 Ideally, before they start dating just with their friends, like if they have a friend who's texting them too late at night or a friend who's sort of spamming on the group text or a friend who's just, you know, blowing up their phone when they can't reach them.

00:24:17.920 Those are boundaries. And that could be your kid. Your kid could be sort of impatiently trying to hear from their good friend and feeling frustrated.

00:24:23.260 And I think because of the pandemic, especially some of us got used to being able to reach people all the time because people were home and, you know, maybe they weren't out as much and they weren't unreachable as much.

00:24:35.140 And we don't want that to be the default is expecting to sort of 24-7 responsivity.

00:24:39.880 So helping kids have empathy for others is like imagining, okay, what are you doing when

00:24:44.540 your friends can't reach you?

00:24:45.560 Oh, okay, homework, dinner.

00:24:46.980 Okay.

00:24:47.500 So what do you think when you're trying to reach your friends, like what could be going

00:24:50.600 on other than like that they hate you?

00:24:52.620 Because the tween brain will go to, oh, they hate me.

00:24:55.020 They're not writing me back because they hate me.

00:24:56.340 It's like, well, if you were still friends at lunch, they probably are not writing back

00:25:01.040 because they're doing their homework.

00:25:02.340 You know what I mean?

00:25:02.820 like let's go to a more likely scenario um is i mean in middle school anything's possible like

00:25:07.760 yeah maybe your friend does hate you but that's not like not the first the first option if you

00:25:13.160 don't write back from someone right away right exactly and you know they might hate you because

00:25:17.540 it's middle school and they're gonna they're gonna change their mind every couple hours and by the

00:25:22.360 time you guys talk they probably won't hate you anymore it's also we don't want our kids like

00:25:26.760 blocking each other we don't want them screenshotting each other's foibles and mistakes i

00:25:30.840 I mean, so much of what we can do by creating a consent-based culture at home by asking our kids what to share also then applies in their peer groups.

00:25:40.020 Like, don't screenshot your friend's text without checking with them or really don't just don't screenshot their text.

00:25:45.240 Don't screenshot their text.

00:25:46.820 They didn't send that for you to do that with it.

00:25:49.980 Right. Exactly. Exactly.

00:25:51.360 And this leads us into territory that I think is very difficult, too, when we're talking about teenagers and sexting and nudes.

00:25:59.960 And how can you talk to your kids about about these kinds of things, which are very real and just they did not exist when when I was a teenager?

00:26:11.820 I'm 43 now. I think we're about the same same age. I think everyone's my age.

00:26:17.020 Yeah, I think that's something that happens when you turn 40.

00:26:19.460 Yeah, I mean, I'm 48. So, yeah, I'm like, I'm definitely grew up with some of the same cultural markers.

00:26:24.460 yeah and we would have sexed it too in our generation had the technology been available

00:26:30.100 and i think it's really important to recognize that absolutely so the idea that like kids are 0.88

00:26:34.600 in some way like deviant or something is ridiculous like anyone would have done this if they had the

00:26:38.680 tag but and especially impulsively because you know there's no you know if if we took naughty

00:26:44.680 pictures and took them to the drugstore to be developed we had the time to think about should

00:26:48.400 i really go pick those up or do i want to just move on with my life here's the thing kids are

00:26:53.140 Some kids are sending nudes. Some kids are sending other kinds of risque pictures, you know, underwear pictures, etc. And we live in a society with very blurry lines about what's acceptable to share. You could drive by a billboard of a model in a bra and then you tell your kid you can't take a picture of yourself in your bra or you could get arrested. And it's like, well, why is that model not getting arrested? Like, what's going on here?

00:27:13.420 So, you know, we live in a complicated society around sexuality.

00:27:17.040 We're very confused about how to talk to kids about it.

00:27:19.760 There's really great safer sexting tips in my book because two really brave researchers,

00:27:27.620 Samir Hindusha and Justin Patchen, wrote safer sexting tips for teens that they published

00:27:32.580 in an academic journal.

00:27:34.060 And it was brave to even go there because, of course, you can't seem like you're an

00:27:37.480 adult contoning kids sexting because it's illegal in most states.

00:27:40.760 it just it's such tricky territory but for sure things like if you're going to send a nude don't

00:27:46.900 include your face is like not crazy to say to your kid you can say sending nudes has legal risks

00:27:53.680 privacy risks social risks safety risks i'd strongly prefer that you express your sexuality

00:27:58.540 in other ways i don't think your body there's anything wrong with your body or wanting someone

00:28:03.340 else to appreciate how you look or any of that but sending a digital image is a really risky way to

00:28:09.880 kind of have that experience. And I would hope that you would find safer ways to, you know,

00:28:15.220 be sexual, right? Like there's an argument to be made that sexting is safer sex. And yet there's

00:28:21.800 also an argument to be made that it's actually safer to be with someone in person without any

00:28:25.540 digital documentation. What I found is that kids really want a lot of control over some of their

00:28:31.060 early sexual experiences. And that some of what's happening with sexting is that kids want to be in

00:28:36.020 control of the lighting, exactly how much of themselves they share. And so sexting feels like

00:28:41.760 a very safe and empowering way to connect in some ways, which seems so wacky to us because we think

00:28:46.980 of all the disempowering ways someone could share without consent or even weaponize an image that

00:28:52.120 we've shared. But for some kids, that validation and that safety that they kind of picture coming

00:28:59.280 from an image they control and that they control sort of who sees it and when, again, not thinking

00:29:05.460 maybe about the fact that that could change is empowering to them. We need to balance our

00:29:12.380 conversations about sexting, like the dangers with understanding some of the reasons kids do it

00:29:18.420 and make sure they understand that they have rights, that even if someone then exploits their

00:29:24.420 trust and shares an image without their consent, they can come to us and we can help them navigate

00:29:29.880 that situation because they continue to have privacy rights. Like even if you've sort of

00:29:35.400 quote unquote made a mistake and shared an image with someone that then didn't turn out to be

00:29:38.980 trustworthy, you don't lose all your rights to then be protected because that person has your

00:29:43.480 image. So as caregivers and as adults in these kids' lives, we need to make sure they know that

00:29:50.080 even if they feel embarrassed or regretful that they've shared something, they haven't lost all

00:29:54.580 their privacy and safety rights. That person can still get in big trouble for sharing that

00:29:59.240 without consent. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And I like that it's a conversation. I like that

00:30:06.780 it's not an edict, like a list of rules, but it is an ongoing conversation that isn't just about

00:30:15.400 the pictures, but also is about their sexuality and how they want that to be, I don't know what

00:30:24.160 the right word is here, but performed in the world, I guess, is a way of talking about it.

00:30:30.220 It's tricky. I mean, most parents, no matter how sex positive you are,

00:30:34.780 are really unprepared for this conversation. And most kids, again, even raised in a sex positive

00:30:39.860 home, are not going to want to talk to parents about the sort of details of like, well, I was

00:30:44.300 seeking this particular kind of validation. You know, like you will always see your kids as

00:30:49.080 adorable and they might want at a certain point to be seen as hot, for example. And like, no

00:30:53.960 matter what you're not going to want to see them that way you know so it's tricky because they're

00:30:59.480 trying you know that's why the social media collapse of context is hard because they're

00:31:03.500 sharing say even on instagram maybe not sexting but like say they're sharing a picture where they

00:31:07.940 want to be seen as sexually attractive and you know maybe like available and you're like whoa

00:31:12.920 whoa whoa that's not how i want to see my kid right but you're still seeing that picture because

00:31:17.920 it really wasn't there for you no it wasn't no it wasn't and i think that's that's that's got

00:31:23.740 to be a hard part of separating yourself as a parent from the viewer of your child's social

00:31:33.120 media. We're going to take a quick break here. And do you tell parents or recommend to parents

00:31:51.040 that they should follow their kids on social media?

00:31:54.600 I think a lot of parents want to.

00:31:56.420 I mean, I think that's a personal decision between parents and kids.

00:31:59.060 Certainly some kids have second accounts that they only share with their close friends,

00:32:03.260 like a spam account, or they're sharing in places like Snapchat that a lot of parents

00:32:07.220 don't really understand how to use, or they're less likely to see specific images.

00:32:12.400 So that's a way that kids are kind of carving out a more private space.

00:32:16.400 Because the idea that parents are going to really follow their kids may seem antiquated. But even so, I do often see parents and they're trying they're so hard. They're so intensely trying not to body shame. Like so many of my feminist mom parents would be like, I don't want to body shame my kid. But oh, my gosh, aren't they cold going out in Minnesota and that crop top at college? And like, I didn't want to see that picture. And I'm like, well, I assume they wore a coat over the crop top to the party, you know, and they didn't go out in the like negative 20 with just the crop top.

00:32:46.400 But also, yeah, that picture really isn't for you.

00:32:49.080 Like, I don't think you're the intended consumer of that image, you know?

00:32:53.140 No, you're not.

00:32:54.320 No, you're not.

00:32:54.980 I was actually going through my old photos from college the other day for a Substack post called In Praise of Shitty Photos because AI can fix anything now.

00:33:08.500 They can make all photos perfect.

00:33:09.800 And I think the imperfect photos are so beautiful and they're just such a snapshot of actual humanity and life.

00:33:16.400 and woo! Some of the outfits that I was wearing in those photos, but my parents would never see

00:33:24.720 them because I was right before Facebook. But I am in essentially a bra, a skirt where you can

00:33:33.240 definitely see my butt, and boots that went over my knees, dragging a trash can full of jungle juice 0.70

00:33:43.600 down the street in January in Philadelphia. I mean, sounds like a fun day. 1.00

00:33:50.320 Also, I looked so good. I wish I'd known how hot I was when I was 19 years old,

00:33:56.840 but we never know. We never know. But also, no one will see that picture because it is

00:34:00.320 in a box in my closet, although I might put it on my sub stack because I look awesome.

00:34:07.640 I mean, yeah, I think about my bat mitzvah photos and how there's very few sort of tween

00:34:12.180 in teen pictures of me and it's just in those awkward years and I'm like that's okay and some

00:34:17.180 of the advice I got you know when I was interviewing experts for growing up in public I talked to an

00:34:23.260 eating disorder prevention specialist and she was like yeah maybe less full body photos of your kids

00:34:28.880 when they're in puberty and I was like oh interesting and I thought yeah I have like no

00:34:33.920 body photos of me from that those years like I have my school headshots and then I had like

00:34:38.320 a few pictures of me from my bat mitzvah, you know, in this horrible dress. But there's not a

00:34:43.560 lot of like, you know, there's no bathing suit pictures from me at like 12 or 15. And that's

00:34:48.240 okay with me. And that's okay. Yeah. What else did the eating disorder expert talk to you about?

00:34:55.540 Because that is such a big issue with young women and the images that they're consuming 1.00

00:35:00.160 on social media. And frankly, boys too are more body conscious than they were because

00:35:06.540 of seeing so many more images on social media and media in general like there's

00:35:11.040 actually just greater body consciousness among all kids which is not good she definitely talked

00:35:17.460 about puberty being a time to think about sharing more face photos we don't she said specifically

00:35:22.360 we don't want kids to have a lot of like micro comparisons to make because it's imperative that

00:35:27.440 kids gain a significant amount of weight during puberty and the body fluctuations can be just a

00:35:33.120 lot and kids can get over focused on those like micro fluctuations. And so it's, you know, better

00:35:39.580 to take more clothed pictures and kind of like face pictures in those years. And again, I mean,

00:35:44.660 most kids, I want to be clear that she's obviously looking at a population of kids, many of whom

00:35:49.700 have EDs. And so she's going to look at what, what was the, you know, triggering moments for

00:35:55.220 those kids. Many kids could, you know, be on a swim team and have team photos and like be fine.

00:35:59.900 So I just want to be clear that like, I'm not saying like A equals B, like you take a picture of your kid in a bathing suit and suddenly they have an eating disorder. I want to be clear that all of it is like, there's a bunch of risk factors for any of these things. And she was just saying one risk factor you can reduce is not taking a ton of those kinds of pictures of your kid in those years and especially posting them and sort of having them out for them to micro examine.

00:36:22.820 but I want to be also clear that I'm not saying it's causal like next like if you have a beach

00:36:28.300 photo of your family I'm not saying you're giving your kid an ad let me be really clear about that

00:36:32.100 but I do think it's just worth thinking about reducing those risks and and if you see your

00:36:37.640 kid really obsessing over their image or filtering you know using beauty filters to change how they

00:36:43.300 look um or intensively comparing their bodies with friends bodies on social which social media

00:36:49.980 is like designed to basically to do like I can post a picture of me and my friend can post a

00:36:54.260 picture of her and she gets 50 likes and I get 30 likes and I immediately like okay I'm 20 likes

00:36:59.340 less beautiful than my friend right it's quantifiable it's rough out there and so we

00:37:04.700 want to discourage kids from doing stuff like that and the good news is I've seen a lot fewer

00:37:09.540 kids using their Instagram grids and they're using stories more and stories are you know because they

00:37:15.380 go away after 24 hours, they're more ephemeral. It's a bit more like Snapchat. It may reduce some

00:37:22.020 of that body pressure of like, how many likes does this photo get? And when kids are moving away from

00:37:28.140 the grid kind of posts, I think that's generally kind of a positive thing. They're using social

00:37:35.560 more to direct message and other things. So I still think there's plenty of pressure and there's

00:37:42.480 pressure in all these different kinds of ways. I mean, schools are also posting where all the

00:37:46.100 seniors get into college, you know. So social media is a comparison machine. And teenagers

00:37:51.960 are already super wired to compare. So it's really a tough time to be using an app that

00:38:00.180 is essentially a catalog of comparison. Good. Things I never thought about. My friend got

00:38:07.880 20 more likes than me. I was just worried if my friend got asked to the formal and I didn't. But

00:38:15.280 counting likes feels so hard. And there's pressure, especially on girls, to do the social

00:38:23.040 labor of doing the liking. A lot of girls spend time on social media just having to go and like 1.00

00:38:28.820 everybody's posts and that labor. And boys talked about it too, but they specifically mentioned

00:38:33.820 girls friends who were girls as the like people who would be mad at them if they didn't like

00:38:39.240 their photo um boys theoretically don't care as much now if a boy makes a post and nobody likes

00:38:45.240 it or responds he's still gonna feel you know disappointed about that um but the boys almost

00:38:51.480 can't admit how much they care whereas girls even sometimes boys told me stories about girls direct

00:38:57.480 messaging them to say hey i just posted meaning hey like my post and i'm like oh that's so silly

00:39:03.500 And then I'm like, no, no, I'm writing to people to try to get them to Amazon review my book.

00:39:06.820 Like, that's the same freaking thing.

00:39:08.620 Like, I'm doing exactly what those girls are doing.

00:39:12.000 It is the same thing.

00:39:13.020 And this is also a good place for us to plug your book and also to tell everyone to Amazon review it because readers, Amazon reviews and Goodreads reviews really, really help authors.

00:39:25.080 So order Growing Up in Public for yourself and for a friend and it makes a good Christmas present and then Amazon review it.

00:39:33.500 and good reads review it a hundred percent but also it does make me feel a little sick to my

00:39:39.540 stomach to have to like ask people for that and there's a way that having to quantify our presence

00:39:45.340 whether it's in views likes reviews it is kind of yucky and and when we tell our kids you know

00:39:52.260 friends are more important than followers like i want to be sincere about that and so it does feel

00:39:56.980 weird to have to kind of then like whore myself out for reviews it's very confusing my kid actually

00:40:01.700 And I had a really good laugh about it years ago. The first time I shared something that really, nothing I've ever done has gone viral, viral. The kind of families you're talking about are always super viral compared to anything authors, I think most authors experience. But when my TEDx talk from 2012 in Naperville, really old now, but when it was first shared on Upworthy, and I was watching the views, and my kid was a lot younger then, and I was like, oh, I'm getting really excited. Like 40,000 people have seen my TEDx talk.

00:40:28.200 and my kid was sad like oh is that important and i just laughed and i thought not really

00:40:33.100 just kind of like kind of but i just wanted to like make light of it because i was like you know

00:40:37.980 it's not that important no no but it but it is oh it's so but it's fun but it's but you want to

00:40:46.200 balance that with like you want to balance that i mean i look and that and that is why i just said

00:40:51.780 all of the things about uh people going and uh amazon reviewing your book because i feel like 0.94

00:40:57.480 a crazy sales monster whore all day long. And I hate it. I hate it. I hate it. I hate it. But then 0.98

00:41:04.380 I love my work and I love writing books. But also review this podcast, right? Like go on iTunes and

00:41:09.620 review the podcast. Exactly. And so sometimes I do feel like we are living in an episode of Black

00:41:14.440 Mirror where my livelihood will depend on people liking my next book and this podcast. And I'm not

00:41:22.280 I'm not doing any of this just because I love it.

00:41:26.080 I do love it.

00:41:26.900 But then I also have to pay my mortgage.

00:41:28.980 There's a bunch of books for young adults that I think are really interesting on this

00:41:33.520 front.

00:41:33.700 Like, I really love the book Eliza and Her Monsters.

00:41:36.960 Oh.

00:41:37.520 And that is a story about a girl who is a famous webcomic or has a famous webcomic,

00:41:45.220 but nobody knows who she is in real life.

00:41:46.820 So she's like both famous and making money, but also has her identity secrets. 0.88

00:41:51.180 So she's enjoying like a regular life, but also has the benefits of celebrity.

00:41:55.680 Do you see what I'm saying?

00:41:56.620 Like she's making her living, making her art, but then her parents unintentionally out her.

00:42:01.580 Like her parents don't even know that she's famous and they unintentionally out her and

00:42:05.680 it kind of blows up her life.

00:42:07.020 And this is, it's a young adult novel, but I'm like, anyone could read it, but it'd be

00:42:09.880 a great one to read with your teenagers and have conversations about like, what does celebrity

00:42:13.800 even mean?

00:42:15.540 Right.

00:42:16.660 Why, why would we want to be famous or not want to be famous?

00:42:19.340 And I think, you know, I interviewed some kid influencers for my book and they all were very ambivalent about it.

00:42:27.120 I mean, I think, you know, many of them had good things happen in their lives because of their fame, but also it's complicated.

00:42:35.280 Right. Yeah. That's a good thing for us to end on, too.

00:42:40.320 What were some of the things that the kid influencers told you about their relationship to both fame and then also to social media?

00:42:49.340 I think the most tricky thing is most of them felt like they couldn't quit easily, even though, I mean, one YouTube influencer I talked with extensively who did really walk away, at least for a time, did hear from her parents throughout.

00:43:06.300 Like, she really started her channel on her own.

00:43:08.160 So she's not a family vlogger influencer.

00:43:10.180 Like, it was her thing that was when she was 13, she started doing it.

00:43:13.800 By the time she was 15, you know, she had someone handling all her sponsorships.

00:43:17.660 I don't even know what that person is called.

00:43:19.080 I don't know, like a broker. And she was like doing deals. Her mom worked at her private high 0.99

00:43:23.360 school and she was like doing deals from her mom's car over lunch and stuff. But her mom kept saying 0.78

00:43:27.600 to her throughout, you can quit at any time. Like, it's great that you're doing this. And I

00:43:30.700 am proud of you for being an entrepreneur. I think it's cool. But also you can you can quit at any

00:43:35.040 time. And I think that was really healthy in their case. Like, I think the parent did a really good

00:43:40.680 job of managing her kids fame and including also just safety, like initially reviewing the videos

00:43:46.840 and making sure like their home address wasn't revealed or whatever. 0.88

00:43:50.560 But nonetheless, this young woman still went to college with people knowing who she was.

00:43:54.900 And again, it wasn't like being, you know, Sasha Obama going to college, but it was still

00:43:58.960 there were people who had watched her channel who were then in her dorm or, you know, knew

00:44:04.060 who she was.

00:44:04.660 And I think dealing with that was complicated and and had had fun and not fun aspects to

00:44:10.960 it.

00:44:11.840 So it and it's hard to sort of walk away from and especially like there's a sense of

00:44:16.340 obligation like at one point she took a long break and then came back and the video was like

00:44:20.320 apologizing to her channel fans for the long break and I'm thinking you don't owe us anything

00:44:26.000 no right you don't apologize to me for taking a long break like it's okay like people can love

00:44:31.600 what you do but you're not obligated to keep doing it no no you're not oh I want to give that girl a

00:44:40.360 hug but I'm sure that I'm sure they're doing very well I think having a family that always said

00:44:45.940 you know, this is great, but you're also learning a lot of skills here that are transferable. You

00:44:50.060 don't have to keep making this channel. Like, you know, and this is a kid who had made enough

00:44:53.900 money to pay for her own college education, which, I mean, there's a way that as a parent of a 14

00:44:58.300 year old with that expense looming, I'm like, wow, I wish my kid, you know, was like coming to me

00:45:03.220 with how do I open a big bank account to save all this money to pay for college? Because we live in

00:45:08.780 a society where, you know, it throws families off the cliff. And of course you hate to think of your

00:45:12.620 kid being in debt for the rest of their life at the same time I would never want him to be

00:45:17.860 distracted that way in high school right to an influencer like that's not what I would want

00:45:22.300 I do think that she enjoyed it up to a point and that's the tricky thing is like something can be

00:45:26.700 really great up to a point and it was a creative outlet and now she's doing creative videography

00:45:33.260 and other things as a business so I think she's just like moved instead of being in front of the

00:45:36.960 camera to being behind the camera and for her it seems like that's a healthier place to be

00:45:41.900 And that's all we want.

00:45:43.180 We all just want to be in a healthy place.

00:45:45.040 We want our kids to be in a healthy place because these phones, these devices, none

00:45:48.940 of it is going anywhere.

00:45:49.900 So I do genuinely believe it is up to us to figure out how we will be in a relationship

00:45:57.660 with them and how we want to model that relationship for our kids.

00:46:01.980 A hundred percent.

00:46:03.340 And I think it's possible.

00:46:04.760 I think we've all gotten to sort of peak phone and peak social.

00:46:08.120 And now people are pushing back. And I also see a lot of organizations demanding change from the apps and saying to the apps, hey, if you don't do more content moderation or if you don't, you know, fix these really problematic aspects to what you offer kids, we're going to sue you. And I think that will hopefully lead to some positive changes.

00:46:28.560 And that is all I've got today. God damn it. I really hope that social media just dies. Just 0.99

00:46:35.480 dies. Just drops off the face of the earth before my kids are old enough to talk about sexting.

00:46:40.420 I just... Seriously. Seriously. I'm not even kidding. All right, guys. Go put your phones

00:46:49.160 away for the rest of the day. Take a break. Model those good habits. I mean, if you want to,

00:46:55.160 before you put them away, you could leave a review for this podcast. You could subscribe to

00:47:00.220 Over the Influence, the sub stack, or you could order A Sicilian Inheritance and also Devorah's

00:47:06.060 book, Growing Up in Public. Totally do those things if you want, but then put your phone down

00:47:11.300 and go hug your kids.

Under the Influence (with Jo Piazza) - November 01, 2023

Don't Spy On Your Kids' Phones with Dr. Devorah Heitner

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