Today, we venture into the pressing reality that our children's lives are ever more public, ever more scrutinized, and ever more entangled with their digital identities. This digital sphere isn't a separate reality; it's an integral part of their lives, shaping their reputations, their self-perceptions, and their futures.
Guest: Devorah Heitner, Author
On Twitter | https://twitter.com/DevorahHeitner
Website | https://devorahheitner.com/
On TikTok | https://www.tiktok.com/@devorahheitner1
On Instagram | https://www.instagram.com/devorahheitnerphd/
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Host: Marco Ciappelli, Co-Founder at ITSPmagazine [@ITSPmagazine] and Host of Redefining Society Podcast
On ITSPmagazine | https://www.itspmagazine.com/itspmagazine-podcast-radio-hosts/marco-ciappelli
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Episode Introduction
Welcome to another episode of the Redefining Society Podcast, where we muse on the complex interplay of society, technology, and humanity. I am Marco Ciappelli, your guide through this intricate labyrinth. Today, we venture into the pressing reality that our children's lives are ever more public, ever more scrutinized, and ever more entangled with their digital identities. This digital sphere isn't a separate reality; it's an integral part of their lives, shaping their reputations, their self-perceptions, and their futures.
In this digital age, the lines between the online world and "real life" are not just blurred—they are indistinguishable. Our kids grow up with likes, shares, and retweets as measures of their worth, all while wrestling with the big questions of identity and character development. How can they figure out who they really are when every action, every choice, every moment is up for public scrutiny?
My guest today is Devorah Heitner, author of the definitive work "Growing Up in Public," a book that offers a crucial road map for parents to navigate this complex terrain with their children. Heitner uncovers how the digital world has irrevocably changed the rites of passage for our kids, focusing not just on the threats of exposure or cancel culture but the deeper issues of character and authenticity.
Drawing from her extensive work and research—conversations with kids, parents, educators, and experts—Devorah equips us to cut through the digital noise and connect with our children on a meaningful level. Her book provides actionable strategies that emphasize character over consequences, guiding us to support our children as they navigate what it means to grow up publicly, both online and offline.
So, are we bystanders in this digital narrative, or can we actively shape a more compassionate, more nuanced conversation that respects the fusion of technology and human vulnerability?
As technology becomes even more integrated into our real lives, let's question, let's reflect, and let's redefine what it means to grow up in public.
Listen, share, and subscribe!
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About the Book
The definitive book on helping kids navigate growing up in a world where nearly every moment of their lives can be shared and compared
With social media and constant connection, the boundaries of privacy are stretched thin. Growing Up in Public shows parents how to help tweens and teens navigate boundaries, identity, privacy, and reputation in their digital world.
We can track our kids’ every move with apps, see their grades within minutes of being posted, and fixate on their digital footprint, anxious that a misstep could cause them to be “canceled” or even jeopardize their admission to college. And all of this adds pressure on kids who are coming of age immersed in social media platforms that emphasize “personal brand,” “likes,” and “gotcha” moments. How can they figure out who they really are with zero privacy and constant judgment? Devorah Heitner shows us that by focusing on character, not the threat of getting caught or exposed, we can support our kids to be authentically themselves.
Drawing on her extensive work with parents and schools as well as hundreds of interviews with kids, parents, educators, clinicians, and scholars, Heitner offers strategies for parenting our kids in an always-connected world. With relatable stories and research-backed advice, Growing Up in Public empowers parents to cut through the overwhelm to connect with their kids, recognize how to support them, and help them figure out who they are when everyone is watching.
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Resources
Growing Up in Public: Coming Up of Age in a Digital World (website): https://devorahheitner.com/growing-up-in-public/
Growing Up in Public: Coming Up of Age in a Digital World (Amazon): https://www.amazon.com/Growing-Up-Public-Coming-Digital/dp/0593420969
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Please note that this transcript was created using AI technology and may contain inaccuracies or deviations from the original audio file. The transcript is provided for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as a substitute for the original recording, as errors may exist. At this time, we provide it “as it is,” and we hope it can be helpful for our audience.
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[00:00:00] Marco Ciappelli: all right, everybody. Welcome. This is Redefining Society podcast with me, Marco Ciappelli. Uh, if you're consuming the audio and you're driving, enjoy and pay attention to the road, just Do what I do, which I really get into audible in the car. And then I need to remember that I am actually driving and, uh, or you're walking the dogs, whatever you're doing.
But if you're watching the video, you already know that of course, I am never podcasting by myself. I always have a guest. And today I'm really excited. I had in the past, many conversation about, the next generation and the next generation after that. I like to look at the future a lot. But I also like to look at the future.
Thinking about the past. So what the older generation are doing and what the future one . And I think the future ones are, I don't know, in a very peculiar situation that maybe every generation says that, you know, I don't know. Grandfather said, Hey, nothing was better than my generation or maybe it wasn't, but we always have something different from.
The one before, except technology make changes faster and faster and faster. So we're going to talk about that. We're going to talk about growing up in public, which is a book, and it's about the coming of age in a digital world. And we're here with Devorah Haydener, the author, and she's going to tell us about a world that we need to To think more about I guess.
Um, I do that all the time. So i'm i'm i'm hoping that all the listeners are here Because I do that all the time so a lot to learn today Devorah little introduction about yourself and then let's dive in into this book.
[00:01:50] Dr. Devorah Heitner: Sounds good. So I am I used to be a professor of media studies and I taught 18 to 22 year olds.
And when I was teaching those kids and young adults, they would do, I taught a class called kids, media culture, and they would do interviews with like nine year olds. And that's when I really started to observe the micro generations that even though my students, which back in the day had grown up, you know, with my space, they were doing interviews with kids who were the first kind of.
Really good video game kids and, and, and smartphones were coming out in that era. So this is around like 2010, 2011, 2012. And I recognize that even though these kids could be their siblings, there are already big differences between like a nine year old and a 19 year old in 2012 in terms of what they had grown up with.
And I wrote my first book screen wise in 2016 when I was a new parent. So I had a six year old when that book came out and, you know, parents around me were asking a lot of questions. Should we be sharing our kids on social media? Should we be letting our kids use touchscreen, you know, apps, which are super accessible, even to little kids.
And as I started traveling around the country and speaking about ScreenWise and helping parents and educators kind of demystify the digital kids and hopefully have empathy for them and understand them and support them, as opposed to kind of fearing the changes that Digital technology was bringing into young people's culture.
One of the biggest responses I got was parents coming up to me and saying, Devorah, this is great. I'm super empowered. I get it. Tech can be positive for kids, but I'm so glad my high school years, my college years, my middle school years weren't shared on the internet. I'm so grateful that there's no photographic record of every dumb hairstyle I tried, every stupid dance move, every time I thought maybe I would like take some article of clothing off at a party, every time I was drunk.
And every thought that passed my brain, I'm really glad that that's not, you know, publicly searchable under my name or my face, my face recognition right now. And how are my kids supposed to deal with this? And I thought, Oh my gosh, I need to write another book. What does it mean to grow up in public? What does it mean to grow up with all this sharing and comparing with your parents, sharing you on social media with.
Apps like Life 360 to track you all around town. This is a lot for kids to navigate and a lot for families to figure out. So I've spent the last five years interviewing teenagers and parents and educators, as well as psychologists and other, other experts. to really dive into what it means to grow up in the digital age.
And, uh, and we know people are worried about it, right? The Surgeon General just put out a big report about mental health and teenagers and social media.
[00:04:27] Marco Ciappelli: Yeah, good timing on that.
[00:04:31] Dr. Devorah Heitner: Some of the advice is like, oh, I've been saying this for 10 years, but I'm glad it's catching on, you know, in some ways you can feel like, oh, well, I've been saying this, but in the, in a sense, like, you know, Vivek Murthy has a reach that I don't.
So I'm glad that He's saying, you know, some of the things parents can do to support their kids, for sure.
[00:04:48] Marco Ciappelli: And yet there is always, I was just reading this morning that, that article. And, and of course, like every news nowadays is here's the news. And then at the end is like, but there's also this other side.
So, you know, eventually they start with an headline and they're like, but of course there's a lot of good things that. This is bringing and so we still need a lot of research and a lot of study and probably when they're done with all those studies There's something different So
[00:05:18] Dr. Devorah Heitner: right and meanwhile your kid will be 30.
So what are you supposed to do right now?
[00:05:23] Marco Ciappelli: Yeah, and probably we're all going around with augmented reality glasses and we have even a different uh approach to that so I guess the the thing is it's and I kind of said that at the It's an ongoing thing about what is new, what is new, what is new, and how do we adapt to that?
I mean, I remember my days, TV was the devil and too much TV and the video games start coming out. Are you stuck to that screen? Go out, take a ball, go play football, which, you know, was easy. I was, I grew up in Italy. So maybe we'll touch about the difference, the cultural difference here too. But are we, are we overreacting?
Are we overprotecting just because we can?
[00:06:12] Dr. Devorah Heitner: That's a great question. I think a lot of parents feel like they should surveil their kids. Because they can, there are apps that will do that. There are apps that will help you, you know, track where your kid has gone on the internet, and track all kinds of things, and even track their location.
And a lot of parents use, you know, Find My Phone, or they have their kids, they have watches, and I feel like it can be like an electric bracelet. You know, like if your kid is not in a... It is a program from from prison, you know, should they need an electric bracelet at the same time? There have been times where my kid is out and he doesn't have his phone with him and I feel really worried You know for a moment because in our society we feel like we need to know where everyone is at all times But then i'm like he's 14 He should be able to be out in the world and if he forgot his phone like I know he'll be home later You know, like I don't need to panic But I think especially because we're so used to the electronic tether and having so much information, even, you know, my husband and I worked together before we had cell phones.
And I think about how often we had contact during the day when we were in our, you know, when I was in my 20s and he was in his early 30s and we were working people and we were dating and then we were living together and then we were married and we didn't have phones. How much would I expect, like, if he wasn't coming home at all?
You know, if he missed the train, then I would maybe expect him to get on a pay phone and call me. But if he was just like running a little late, I didn't necessarily expect that phone call. Now it's different when you're sharing child care with someone, then you sort of need to know what they are. And honestly, I can't imagine raising a kid with a partner without a digital calendar.
Like we can look at the Google calendar together and be like, okay, especially when our son was younger. But even now, like we don't go out of town, both of us don't go out of town separately on business trips and leave him. overnight alone, right? So there's not as much need to like hour by hour plan our time.
So there's no childcare gap, but there's still the like, no, wait, you can't go to DC when I'm going to New York, like that's not going to work. Um, and so we have the Google calendar for that. So in some ways the sharing is amazing and it can be a really good tool for co parenting. It can be really tool, good tool for organizing ourselves.
All three of us in our family have ADHD. So it's like a lot. of really helpful tools to organize. But when it gets down to the surveillance, I think a lot of parents feel like they should like, Oh, my kid is driving now. I should get like 360 or my kid is riding their bike to school. I should be doing this.
Or my kid has this app that tells me every time the teacher posts a grade. And I wrote about this in growing up in public, like, should you be seeing every time a teacher posts a grade that might actually be too much information for you, for your child that actually might. I talked to a lot of families where the grading apps were undermining their trust and their relationship, and also it can turn the relationship with your teacher into a very kind of, uh, frustrating relationship or, you know, really quantified relationship where you're just trying to, like, get these points and, you know, you're constantly, instead of reaching out to have a good relationship with the teacher or just thinking about learning, you're constantly, you know, on them about, like, how can I get more points?
How can I get more points? Because you see these numbers all the time. So I think all of these apps that we're told we should have, like, I'm told I should download all these apps from the school every fall, I'm, you know, told that my teenager will be safer if I have Life 360, I think we need to push back and really say, what are we surveilling our kids Right?
I think there can be a role, for example, like say your kid is learning to text and they're 11 and sitting down with them and looking at that with them at their texts. I think covert surveillance has no place, you know, in our parenting lives, but I think sitting down with your kid and saying, okay, well, you're learning to text.
Let's look at this together. Okay. I see maybe this didn't go so well. Do you want to talk about like what you could do differently next time? Right? I think there's a role for that kind of mentorship. where you're being open about looking at it and your kid is actually showing you what they're doing. So I'm not saying, when I say that surveillance is out of control, I'm not saying hand your 11 year old a smartphone and walk away and come back when they're 21 and I hope it goes great.
That's not what I'm saying. We need to mentor our kids on this stuff because these are powerful tools and we're giving kids something very powerful that can cause a lot of problems if we're, if they don't know how to use it well. What I am saying though is that when we're told, parents are I think told like, Hey, you better sign up for all those updates from school.
You better see what Class Dojo is saying about your kid. And for me anyway, as a parent, I found that incredibly stressful. I don't need to know that my son didn't call out without raising his hand at 10 a. m. I'm at work. Call me if it's a big problem, you know, email me if it's a big problem, but I don't need like the minute by minute from school.
And I think those, those apps for little kids like class dojo, just accustomed you to getting all this data. And then your kid is in high school and they walk in the door and you're like, why did you get a 70 on there on that test? And they haven't even seen that yet because they haven't looked yet.
That's too much.
[00:10:54] Marco Ciappelli: I think too much. It's, it's exact points like where is too much. I want to go back a little bit here because you mentioned in this app 360, then you said another one dojo. I am familiar. I know what is about. Can you be more specific? Like what this 360 app does? Let's assume somebody out there doesn't know that.
And. So, you know, what's the intention? Because usually here's one thing I learned in technology. I don't think anyone, well, maybe Dr. Evil, but in general, even a company, it, it, it does something because they want to resolve the problem. And then it kind of get out of hand because you have to monetize and you're going to.
Start adding one thing in another, but the good intention is there. So these 360, these other app that are, you know, sharing your location when you are arriving home on a map or something like that, tell us what is that one and, and why do you think, to start with is so popular. Always the way you talk.
It's almost like they tell you you should have it, and if you don't, we're gonna point the finger at you because you don't, you're a bad, you're a bad parent, right?
[00:12:10] Dr. Devorah Heitner: I think. We're just getting really accustomed to knowing where everyone is. Like I was saying, like we're getting accustomed to being able to check in.
A lot of parents have rules that are understandable. I mean, I also want my son to write me back if I text him and say, where are you? When are you coming home? I don't want him to ignore me. So I understand that feeling as a parent was very frustrating and I can understand why a parent 360. You can check in on everyone's location and people opt in.
So you have like a family membership. And for us, we're just a family of three, just me, my husband, and our son. And we would be able to see each other on the map. And some people love it. I'm going to say not everyone I interviewed hated it. A lot of people told me that they use it in funny ways too, that their kids will see that they're by their favorite.
Donut shop and say, oh, I see you're over there by you know, Huck Finn Donuts. Can you pick me up a really, you know, a chocolate cruller? Um, I had parents telling me when their kids came home from college during uh, We we we can talk among as adults here, right? So so their kids were home from college suddenly due to covid and the parents were like Um, my kid is coming in and out of the house at all times, and I don't know when me and my partner can have some, some alone time for intimacy, so I'm going to look at my 360 and I see my kid is just going to the movie theater.
I think we have two hours, honey. Like, I mean, I think there's a lot of reasons why you would use it. That might not be bad, right? I kind of think that's a great use of it. Technology is like, okay, we have privacy. But at the same time, if you're tracking your 16 year old all over town, because you think you should, and they're basically doing okay, they've not given you a reason to mistrust them.
And I had a mother tell me in growing up in public, the stories in the book that she found that her son was stopping at a girl's house every day. And she's like, is that his tutor? Is that his girlfriend? Is that his drug dealer? I have no idea, but we don't know this girl. Why is he going there? And I thought.
Let him tell you if that's his girlfriend. Like maybe he wants to get to know her before he brings her home to his mom. Like not every high school relationship is the person you introduce your parents to, but also like give him a minute, you know, like let him tell you. And if you have no reason to worry, your kid is showing up to school.
They're doing, you know, doing a good job there. They're not, you know, on drugs or doing anything that's problematic that you have reason to worry about. Then why would you suddenly be like, Oh no, they're stopping at someone's house. You know, that I don't know. At 16, I mean, that's, that's kind of extreme. So I think we, we just need to back off a little bit from all this surveillance and at least be aware of what we're doing it for.
Now, when parents say, okay, my kid is driving alone cross country and it'll bring me a lot of reassurance and actually decrease the amount of fighting because I won't be texting them all the time if I see that their dot is making their way across the country. And the kid agrees to that, I would say that that might be a good thing too.
Like, if we can use these technologies. in a way that affirms the relationship and doesn't undermine trust. But the second it's starting to undermine trust or cause fights in the family, I would take it off my phone and just take a break.
[00:15:05] Marco Ciappelli: A lot to think about because so here's what comes in my mind. You know, um, an old movie, um, with, uh, Kurt Russell back from the 80s. Um, uh, I think was Escape from New York. His character was Yana Plinsky. I don't know if you're familiar with that. And he has to save the president in this post apocalyptic, uh, New York.
And, uh, yeah, he has a monitor. And they all the entire time he tried to get rid of it as you're telling me all these things. I'm like, I just can totally see this despite finding the, you know, the, the transmitter and throw it in the opposite train. And so that you don't know, and you can't follow anymore.
So my point is apart from the joke is it's time and place. Right. So on one way, do we need to know every time? I mean, you mentioned there are certain situations it helps. I do share my location if I'm traveling, you know, with my wife or, you know, with my friends, if I, if I want them to feel relaxed about it.
Once I'm done. I'm going to turn it off. I have no desire. Now, I'm talking about me as an adult where you can choose when it's useful or not. So, I, I guess my, my question for you is to establish these boundaries and also this immediacy of things. Like, I have people, and I know that, that you... Text someone you don't get a text back in like five minutes.
You call them. Hey, I just text you and I'm like, I know I saw it, but you know, what are you going to do? Send me an email to or I don't know what's up or whatever it is. So this time this I think the anxiety is becoming. a problem with this, and I, I, I feel it sometimes. I, like, I'm overworried, but then I look back and I'm thinking, like, it has never been like this in the other generation before.
[00:17:15] Dr. Devorah Heitner: I mean, Well, we need to, yeah, we need to model for young people that we can wait, and that it's okay to not get back to people right away if we're busy. But how will kids know that? And I see kids blowing up each other's phones, and especially after the last three years, so many of us were reachable all the time, and now we're getting back into doing more things.
So yeah, we'll see kids like text someone again and again, and you know, I thought I had taught my kid not to do that, but then I saw him doing it. I was like, no, no, I wrote about this in Screenrise, like how are you doing this? But we just all have to work on ourselves and our patients. I mean, My mother in law is 92 and she was driving into her late 80s and she would like pull over to answer her cell phone.
And I'm like, at least you're pulling over, but you don't have to pull over and answer your cell phone. You can just get back to me later. I'm just calling you to see if you want to eat dinner later. Like we'll talk, you know, it's okay. And so I think that immediate feedback is a lot. I think teaching kids to even have empathy for the other person and think about what you're doing when you can't get back to someone like, and think about, okay, that's what my friend might be doing.
And so they might be eating dinner. They might be doing homework. They might be, you know, playing soccer outside. They're not, it's okay if they're not getting back to me. And it doesn't mean they hate me. And I think being an adult. We have that perspective. Like if I don't hear back from someone right away, I don't immediately go to, they hate me and they don't want to talk to me.
I, you know, I know I'm busy so I can have empathy and imagine everyone else is busy, but I think when you're a kid and especially if 90% of the time your friend does get right back to you. When they don't, it can feel like they're wanting to not talk to you again.
[00:18:49] Marco Ciappelli: Let's talk about, I mean, we could keep talking about this for a long time, but I want to move more into where you started.
Meaning, since an early age, You are in public. So apart from knowing in the family or amongst the friends, which, you know, again, I think could be very useful, but boundaries, please give me my space. Uh, but the fact that we use in social media and we're advertising and publicizing kids since when they're born, uh, I heard cases in France were.
Kids are suing their parents because they did something like that. Like I didn't give you my Permission now there are people I mean everybody knows what I've done at every stage of my life. Not cool Why don't we just think about this? Right?
[00:19:43] Dr. Devorah Heitner: So the extreme cases, like the kid influencers where the parents are monetizing it.
But I think a lot of kids, even whose parents are just sharing for fun on Facebook or Instagram, where it's really just about like, I just want to show what a great parent I am. I want to show a cute, my kids are, I want to get likes and it's. Not even that level of monetization, it still can feel very invasive and problematic to kids.
[00:20:06] Marco Ciappelli: So here's my more specific question. Um, I like to ask who is educating the educator? And I do that in, for teachers. And I think that there's been a gap, uh, that passage from, from analogic world to digital world, and then Social media blow up everything. Do the parents, and maybe the parents that didn't grow up with this, but just the fact you grew up with something doesn't mean you're an expert at it.
You just use it, right? So I don't want to point finger, but shouldn't we all have gotten a better education on what... The phone does the smartphone there is a GPS in there and there is an app for that and I mean Where do we? Where did it start it this problem?
[00:21:02] Dr. Devorah Heitner: I mean, this is what I do because and and it's not like i'm not so far ahead of the parents and educators I'm speaking to but I do go around to schools and workplaces and talk to people about this stuff And the main thing I see myself as a translator because I try to speak to kids as much as possible and find out about their experience because the ways they use even the same tools like a lot of adults are on Instagram and so are a lot of kids like some things are more young people like discord skews pretty young you know tiktok obviously there's a huge range but Not everyone's on it.
But something like Instagram, you have a lot of parents on it and a lot of teenagers, but they're using it differently. And I think it's important for parents to even understand, even if I'm using the same tech tools as my kid, or even if I'm a gamer, my kid might have a different experience coming of age in a gaming community, partly because they're maybe coming of age on a public server in a place like Roblox or Minecraft, where I was playing games with people I knew, which already is a different experience, right?
Just like that community level of, you know, like, and I mean, I took my son to a gaming arcade in Alameda. In the Bay Area and he saw the old games that my husband and I played and I wasn't a huge gamer and neither of us were huge gamers but you know part of it was because we had Pong and Pac Man. Maybe we would have been huge gamers if we had had Minecraft, right?
Like the games are much better. So I think and my kid felt sorry for us. He was like... Felt bad when he saw those games. He was like, this is like the sorriest I've ever, you know, like you, all the stories, parents tell kids, I walked 20 miles in the snow and then he saw Pong. He was like, okay, now I really feel bad for you.
[00:22:32] Marco Ciappelli: But it was so cool when you had it,
[00:22:34] Dr. Devorah Heitner: it was so cool. Right. But I think that one of the differences is that you have to have a different level of education to even play Roblox. Cause you can meet strangers on Roblox. So when we were playing Atari, or when we were going to the arcade, I guess, and putting in a quarter, like, A, it's a time limited.
Anything where you have to pay money, you know, per, per slot, you know, it's time limited. So we didn't have to tell our kids don't play for 10 hours because they would have run out of money. And then, you know, something like the Atari was just in your house. Like it, what you weren't playing with. You know, people on a public network.
So the conversation you have to have with a seven, eight, or nine year old about Roblox, or Minecraft, or Fortnite, where you have to say like, hey, if someone asks where you live, or anything like that, or that it's even okay to leave if people are being hateful. Like, a lot of kids don't know that if someone's being hateful online, they can just leave the situation.
Because we teach our kids to be nice, and sometimes we forget to teach them. Yeah, but if someone's dropping racial slurs into your Roblox chat, you can just bug on out of there. You don't have to stay. So... Who's teaching the teachers? I mean, I think there's a lot of organizations that are trying. I mean, I think, you know, ISTE, which is one of the big digital citizenship and digital, you know, digital educational organizations has good digital citizenship standards for educators.
But I also think the pandemic was a huge accelerant and tons of families got school devices that they might not have been super ready for. And schools weren't always in a position to do a great job mentoring parents on, Hey, you can take that school iPad or Chromebook away at night. You don't need to let kids go to bed with it.
You know, and I think that's also depending on how empowered a parent feels related to school, which can be A lot about class and immigration status and other things like, you know, if my kid says, oh, this is for school, I might feel like, oh, I better let them have it at all times, you know, um, whereas I, I might feel different about that.
I might feel more empowered and say, no kid, you can't have your Chromebook in bed at night, you got to go to sleep. I think schools could do a better job with outreach to parents about the school devices, as well as what kids can do on personal devices, including even a family shared device, you know.
Even before your kid gets their own phone, they're going to play with your phone. So these are things we need to talk about long before they even have their own device.
[00:24:46] Marco Ciappelli: So let's talk about the difference between this digital space and the real space. Because again, if you The kid goes to the arcade and you say, well, don't trust the stranger.
If somebody's going to try to talk to you, an older person, you know, don't get candies from people you don't know. Don't get rides in a, in a van or whatever, anybody. So I'm. And that was like, okay, it's real. It's physical. It's real people. And when I think about the online world, the connected one, not the one way, the Atari, like that was one way watching TV was a one way thing, radio, it's one way, unless you call them in now, every time you, you kind of open the door of the internet and you're in a multi player environment or chat or social media, you're the way I see it is you're, you're literally opening a door and you're going outside. It's just not a concrete world, but it's still an open world. So I don't know if it's hard to grasp for people that. It's still real.
[00:26:09] Dr. Devorah Heitner: It's very real. And I think a lot of kids make real friends online, like in discord, like in an interest based or a gaming discord, for example.
And so, and, and I'm not here to say strangers on the internet are always bad because it, you know, I'm here talking to you and you're a stranger, stranger on the internet. I fly out to schools and companies all the time to speak to someone who was once. a stranger on the internet. Maybe they DM'd me on Twitter and then I'm, you know, flying to their location to speak to their company or something.
So I think it's very important to understand the ways we can verify someone's identity and figure out who they are, the ways we can make sure our own identity is aligned with who we are, but also that we're sharing to the degree that's safe and it may be safer to share as an adult more of your identity and who you are than it is when you're a kid.
But we also don't want to teach kids necessarily to just have like a fake identity or a pseudonym necessarily online. Like that might be an option to have a gaming handle that's not your name. But what we don't want to do is teach kids to do whatever they want on the internet because they're, they're hiding.
We, we want to make sure that everyone understands that everything you do is ultimately attributable to you and that you don't want to cause harm, whether it's under your own name or under a pseudonym or, you know, a handle or an avatar. I think that's really important because I think we we give a lot of space to anonymity on the internet, but we know we all know that anonymous spaces on the internet can be very, very awful and cruel, and that's not where we want our kids.
That's not a good sandbox for kids. So it's better to have your name out there and be accountable most of the time. I think that the question of how do we have that conversation? I think the kids can lead that conversation. I mean, they know a lot of kids are forming community. I In Tumblr, in Discord and other spaces.
And so asking them, what does that look like? I talk to kids who are mods, so they're thinking about like, this is how we moderate this community. These are the rules of this community. If you violate those rules, I'm going to kick you out. You know, so I think the kids are actually in some ways the leaders on some of this, not that they don't need our mentorship and support.
Again, I don't want to say like, hand your 11 year old the phone and throw them in the deep end and we're all good here. You know, that's not what I mean. We don't necessarily want to be sort of lord of the flies and the 11 year olds lead the 11 year olds. But if you talk to a 15 or 16 year old, who's a moderator on a discord, They're going to have a pretty good idea of like, what is civil discourse?
What is the behavior that crosses the line, right? And that's a really good thing for young people to get involved in and to think about, because we're all in these digital communities, whether it's your office Slack, whether it's the podcast community and you're hanging out, you know, in, in that world, whether you're on LinkedIn, like all of these are digital communities and thinking about what are the rules and the habits.
of how we associate and talk about ourselves in these communities. You know, when is sharing something that's good news great? When is it too much and it's like bragging? You know, like how often can you do it? Um, all these, and it's very subtle, right? This is why I think it's ideal for kids to learn to text first and then, you know, add social apps, maybe one at a time, and not kind of go into all of them at once, because they are subtle spaces in every...
Space has its own kind of hidden rules and curriculum and it can be a lot to navigate. So I do think, you know, coming back to who's teaching the teachers, I think we need to be in dialogue with our kids. We need to be mentoring them on the social skills, not being impulsive online, you know, walking it back and apologizing and being accountable when we mess up.
And we need to model for them, you know, how to communicate with people. And if we're in conflict, like if you're having something go wrong on a text, maybe calling someone up to work it out. And we need to listen to them and have them show us some of the ways that they are doing it because they did grow up with this stuff and sometimes their instincts are better.
You know, whereas a parent will brag about their kids on Facebook, the kid will be like, no, no, that's embarrassing. Like don't, don't put my award ceremony on Facebook. Like you can tell grandma, you know, and they'll have a more subtle kind of attention to like, who is the audience for this post? It shouldn't be everyone we know.
[00:30:03] Marco Ciappelli: Common sense. So. Um, I could go in a lot of different places, and I feel like we could talk about other things. And I go back to the growing in public. I'm thinking back into the, you know, Andy Warhol, 15 minutes of fames, which now we all have, as long as you do something cool, everybody knows who you are, and then also goes away pretty quick.
But people monetize on it, but we're already looking at a certain age. But you also mentioned the younger kids where the parents kind of exploit that, and that's probably an entirely different conversation. I want to wrap it up with a few, few things about the book. Number one, which I'd like to ask that question, who did you have in mind?
When you brought this book, is it for parents? Is it for teachers? Is it for community, manager to educator? What, what is it? Who is for? And usually I get everybody, but you know.
[00:31:05] Dr. Devorah Heitner: Yeah. I mean, I would say everybody, everybody who cares about kids, but I think especially parents and educators who are dealing with these questions day to day.
who are tasked with this really hard job of mentoring kids. I hope some people who also work in tech and do design some of these apps, including some of the education apps like Life360 and ClassDojo, as well as your Metas and your TikToks, you know, I hope they look at it too. I hope anyone who's trying to scare kids into having a personal brand, which I think is BS, is looking at it.
You know, so I think all of these people, but, but for sure, parents and educators are a core audience. I'm hoping. Young adults may also have a look at it and that when I speak at colleges, you know, I'll be interested to see what young students who have just kind of passed through high school and are into their kind of early years of their college career because they're being really threatened with this idea of whatever you post, then the Google recruiter won't want you or, you know, whatever you post, you won't get into Princeton or Berkeley.
I think those kids and young adults need to look at this stuff too. I mean, that's, that's not as much of the direct audience for this book. Um, it's definitely written more for people raising kids and teaching kids. But I'll be very excited if some people in their early 20s read it and say, yes, this is valid, you know, and relevant to my experience or, you know, here's what you missed, Devorah.
I'm always, I always welcome those conversations with young people where they're like, yeah, yeah, that's good, but here's what you missed. You know, because I think young people are the experts ultimately on their own experience, and we do want to be listening to them.
[00:32:37] Marco Ciappelli: I think that's, that's beautiful what you said, because I'm also thinking as either online or offline, kids do, I mean humans and kids, of course, they, they create their own community.
You mentioned that they create their own rule. You may go from one group to another. And you need to kind of adapt your behavior. You go to school, maybe you're a little bit different than when you are hanging out with your sports teammate. Or when you are online on Discord playing a game on Twitch or whatever it is.
So there is this adaptation and that's human. That's very human. And I am... Kind of condensating this entire message, and tell me if I'm wrong, but I'm going to the word trust. Trust the kids, trust the parents, then maybe they won't be those creepy, following you all the time, because it's not cool, I mean...
Thinking that every move I make, I'll be watching you. It's gonna like, go too much.
[00:33:51] Dr. Devorah Heitner: Yeah, that song has not aged well.
[00:33:54] Marco Ciappelli: No, exactly. Not in that case. Thank you, Sting. But, on the other hand, trust in the kids to, to do the right thing. And, and maybe the kids trust in the parents as well. So would it, would it come down to, to that, I think, trust.
Would you agree?
[00:34:15] Dr. Devorah Heitner: Yeah, I think trust and maybe authenticity as well. You know, or alignment. Like, how do, how do my actions in this space align with who I am and what I want to be seen? You know, am I coming through? And even, even authenticity, I think, can be kind of like monetized and branded. So it's kind of... Because people in advertising are like, authenticity.
And I think that's BS too, but truly, you know, can you be yourself in these spaces and, and yeah, I think trust is really important and having trust and having trust in yourself, like as a parent in this generation to have trust in myself as well as in my kid and say, you know what, I'm not messing up as a mom, if I'm not reading all my kids texts, as long as he knows he can talk to me, if someone is harassing him or he's in a situation.
That he doesn't know how to deal with. I've left the door open. I've made it very clear that he can talk to me. That he can share the situation without naming names, for example, which is very different than reading someone's text and knowing, like, which friend is in crisis. He could come to me and say, I have a friend who's in crisis, who's, you know, thinking about suicide, like, what are the things I can do to help?
And he maybe doesn't have to tell me who it is, and I can give him some resources, right? I mean, there might be a situation where, you know, I would want to know or I want to get more involved, but At least we wanna be clear if our kids trust us that we're not snooping, they can also come to us if they do need help.
And I think that's very important because if they think we're snooping and spying on them, they're less likely to open up to us and tell us what they need when there is a crisis. So I, I think it's really important. And, and also to trust. Yeah, to trust our own instincts. If, you know, five other moms and I are up to lunch and they're like, I follow my kid on Life 360, for me to trust that I'm okay if I choose not to.
[00:35:54] Marco Ciappelli: Right. Just because you can, doesn't mean you should. Exactly. I love that. Ah, what could be my last question? Ah, here we go. So you study media. And I know I'm dragging it a little bit, but I'm really enjoying this conversation. So you've studied media and you've seen all the changes. I've seen all those changes myself since the time I was studying sociology of communication and mass media and so on.
Um, How much do you think is affecting our daily life, real life versus the online life? So, this media that we are in the TV, we are inside the radio, we are, we are the anchor person, we are the podcaster, we are the people on Twitter doing the dance and getting thousands of people and leaving other people live and sometimes it's, it's fake.
It could create a lot of problems. But then. When we turn off the phone, when we turn, you know, close the computer, are we still real human or we have become digital even in our physical life? I know it could be a very philosophical question but...
[00:37:16] Dr. Devorah Heitner: I mean, I think our real life is and our digital life are connected.
And as you say, it's not one or the other, and that's very permeable. But I think that opportunity for instant fame is also very confusing. And especially for kids, we should be talking about the quality of our relationships and not just the quantity, you know, like, I don't, I mean, as much as, you know, my publisher wants me to have a million.
And followers. And in some ways, like financially, like for me as a self employed author and entrepreneur, like, of course, you know, there's that drive to like more and more and more, but I'd rather have one good conversation, you know, and for our kids, like, I want them to understand what's one good friend.
Like one good friend is everything, right? You don't need a million people to follow you. All someone who follows you did is press a button. And it's like, nice when I post, you know, on Substack or LinkedIn and, you know, a bunch of people follow me. I'm like, oh, they pressed a button. But that's not a high level of engagement.
That's not the people who are outside my door with chicken soup if I'm sick. And the people I show up for if they need me, right, like that, we, we have to make sure we're looking at the quality of our relationships. And most of us can count our close friends on one hand. You know, if you're very social, maybe it's two hands, but it shouldn't be like fingers and toes.
You know, if you're talking about a four or five digit number, that's not your friends. And I think it's very important for kids to understand that, that we really want to think about who in, in a pinch in our real lives, like who matters. And it could be a friend you met on Discord, but ultimately, even though that might be where you met, it does, what is the relationship and is the relationship just beyond that one space, you know, and what has it transcended that relationship?
I mean, so many of us are married to or living with someone we met on, you know, Tinder or an earlier version of dating app, you know, Bumble or JDate. My dad's married to someone he met on JDate. So like, you know, that's, that was a stranger from the internet once, now that's his life partner, you know? But it's important to think about, it transcended that, you know, he's not just on the apps like forever, right?
That's a different thing to do. You can do that too, that's fine, but like... That's different than a relationship that trend, you know, the, the app was the portal and now the relationship transcends the app.
[00:39:20] Marco Ciappelli: Oh my God. I'm just thinking, I get an episode of like black mirror could be where, you know, you walk in the street and I'm, I don't know, I haven't really seen many episodes.
So there could be one, but I'm just thinking when you go back home, after you walk in the street, you go to the library, you go to school. Do you have. More followers because somebody smile at you. Does it count like a like or subscribe or, you know, it's kind of like, you know, a real melting of the two, the two world.
And I don't know, on one side, it's kind of fun on the other one. It's. Kind of scary.
[00:39:54] Dr. Devorah Heitner: So what was the Dave Eggers book that was along those lines? You know, that was kind of a riff on Facebook. I mean, that was a very creepy. Yeah. I mean, that, that was, you know, and, and, and you do get ratings in your interaction.
So there's like Yelp for you in this book and all day people are rating their interactions with you.
[00:40:17] Marco Ciappelli: Yeah, and getting credit. It's kind of like, you know, I think China is doing something like that anyway, but Oh the circle, okay.
[00:40:25] Dr. Devorah Heitner: Yes, that book was so creepy Yeah, it freaked me out so much
[00:40:30] Marco Ciappelli: Better make you think maybe sometimes you do need to draw a line But we're gonna draw a line on this conversation again I know it went longer than what planned but I really truly enjoyed it as a topic that just fascinated me to to look at what was life before and During and what it could be in a long, you know, long years and period from now.
Is it gonna go utopic or dystopic? I hope not dystopic, but I don't know. I wouldn't put all my money on on utopia here So Devorah, thank you so much. I want to invite everybody to Get the book which by the time that will listen this is either about to be published or published And of course getting the feedback.
I love how you said we need to check with With the, with the subject of the book, if we're actually getting it right or wrong. 100%. Don't make the wrong rules. Right? Don't make the wrong rules. All right. Thank you so much. Everybody stay tuned. There will be a link to the Vora website, book. Uh social media and uh, just give her time to answer don't don't expect her to answer right away
[00:41:48] Dr. Devorah Heitner: Thank you
[00:41:49] Marco Ciappelli: All right.
Take care everybody subscribe Again, follow us, uh redefining society podcast on ITSPmagazine. Bye. Bye