Dr. Devorah Heitner on Parenting Kids Who Are Growing Up Online

Debbie:

Hey, Devorah, welcome back to the podcast.

Devorah:

I’m so glad to be here.

Debbie:

Well, I just want to say also this is your third time back at the show and you are that pretty much ranks you as one of the most frequent guests of the show. I don’t know if that is something you should be getting an award for if congratulations are in order, but just wanted to point that out.

Devorah:

I feel like I want an award for sure. No, just kidding. It’s its own reward. And the show has been such an inspiration to me and it’s one of the podcasts that I love to listen to the most. So it feels really great to be in the conversation with the folks that you’ve been having.

Debbie:

That’s awesome. Well, thank you. And listeners, by the way, before you even dive in, I do want to share that I will have links to those past visits with Devorah in the show notes page. They were both very interesting conversations. And then we actually did a mental health kind of screen back to school survival event last summer year ago, which is also available. So I’ll have links to all of that stuff in the show notes. But we are pivoting today to talk about your new book. It is called Growing Up in Public, Coming of Age in a Digital World, and it is such an important book for what we are all experiencing as a society, as parents raising kids in this complex time. And I have known about this book since it was the seed of an idea. And I’d love if you could start by telling us why you felt so driven to get this book out into the world.

Devorah:

I had been thinking about kids in tech for a long time. And when I wrote Screenwise, I got to be in a lot of conversations at schools and in other communities around a lot of what kids receive on screens, what they watch, YouTube, TV, and things like gaming. But there wasn’t as much in that book and in those conversations about what kids post about themselves. And that was something that parents were still anxious about. So parents would say to me, oh, I’m really reassured about my kids’ screen time. But what about their reputation? What about what people can find out about them? And then as I started researching the ways kids share about themselves, I started to understand that there are other ways that kids are very exposed and surveilled in the digital world and that parents play a role in that too, sometimes intentionally and sometimes I think we’re just kind of drawn into it. So I started by asking the question that everyone was asking, which is what if my middle schooler goes viral for the wrong reason or shares too much? about themselves. And I also ended up wanting to answer some questions that not as many people were asking, which is like, how are parents and educators potentially making this worse? So I’m trying to address both of those questions in growing up in public. And it’s really about how we can help kids feel seen and understood and connected and not just surveilled and watched.

Debbie:

Yeah. I just feel like with every really weak that goes by, your book becomes more and more urgent, more and more relevant. I think the timing is so great for it coming out of COVID, just on so many different levels. And I really want to dive into a lot of the concepts that you shared. I actually, full disclosure, I have four pages of questions. We’re not going to get through them all, but… I do want to kind of touch upon some of the things that really jumped out at me as a reader as being super important, particularly for the audience of this show. So I just want to even start with this concept of respecting our kids’ privacy, especially in their texts, in their online communication. That is a really messy concept for so many parents. And it seems like as a parent, we have to go through this transition. where we’re being really involved and really aware of not just their tech life, but of every aspect of our kids’ life, right? Like who they are. And we have to pivot to respecting that they have their own experience. They have rights to privacy and to private relationships. So could you talk about how parents can navigate that transition? Like when it should happen and why do we resist it so much?

Devorah:

I think that it’s possible the fact that it’s possible to do like I think if our parents could have done that they might have, do you know what I mean? Like, I don’t think that we are more inherently more nosy than our parents. It’s just that so much of the communication is silent now. And it’s so hard to know what’s going on with kids. And I understand the urge. And I’m not saying there’s never a place to even side by side, like look with your child, for example, at their communication, especially if they need social support and coaching. I do think that we shouldn’t be just reading out of curiosity, that we shouldn’t be taking a deep dive, and that as our kids get older and as their relationships grow more complex, if they get into romantic relationships or more complicated friendships, then that’s even more important to give them the space to have private communication in those relationships. I do think there is a place for reading, you know, maybe a new texter’s text with them, for example, but that’s more about a mentoring conversation where you’re doing it with them. What I don’t think we want to be doing is covertly surveilling, because when we covertly surveil, we’re going to get a lot of information that we won’t know how to interpret. And how do you guide a kid that you’ve covertly surveilled? You can really only play that game once.

Debbie:

Yeah. One of the quotes I pulled out in the book, you said, just because technology allows us to read those messages and take that front row seat, it doesn’t mean that we should. And I was like, a highlight, pulling out the highlighter for that one. And you also said that just as monitoring our kids can drive our kids to be even more secretive than they might have been without our surveillance, it can drive them further away by undermining their trust in us. and that you said you’ve seen this over and over again where kids find out their parents have read their texts or attract them, they feel a sense of violation.

Devorah:

Yes, and I think that I’ve experienced that in my own family where even we’ve inadvertently read one another’s stuff because we’re just sloppy with Apple passwords and IDs and stuff like that and we are just, all of us, like, oh wait, that’s not good. So we’ve really done more to kind of clean up our act around privacy and just being organized and even just less laptop sharing. There were a few years. Earlier in the pandemic, we were all kind of passing around computers more in the family and we just recognized that there was a real privacy risk. The flip side is there’s less opportunity to mentor kids in how to communicate because they’re not overhearing us on the phone because we’re thumbing out our lives. So one thing we may want to do is when appropriate, let them into some of our communication so they can see even some of our decisions like, oh, maybe we’ll tell grandma that news in person because it’s big news. We want to be with her when we tell her that instead of texting her. you know, that kind of thing so that they’re getting some ideas and strategies for how to communicate. Cause otherwise the opportunities to mentor are so limited because texting is inherently such a private way of communicating. Whereas we heard our parents on the phone and that gave us maybe good or bad examples.

Debbie:

Mm-hmm. That’s so interesting to think about it that way. So all right, so you have a chapter on tracking our kids and you say that there are apps that flag different types of content. I did not know this. On our kids’ phones and social media, including language that might indicate a kid is having a mental health crisis, is having suicidal ideation. And so I know that that’s something a lot of listeners have kids who are struggling with anxiety and depression. and other mental health issues. So are there different rules for parents whose kids are really struggling in terms of what we should be tracking or monitoring?

Devorah:

To some degree. I mean, I would say a kid who’s coming home from an inpatient stay or a kid who is in like a day program because they’re really in crisis, for example, might be a kid who might need some more support on the digital world than just like, okay, don’t look at sites that are harmful. But even in that case, that would be a three, at least a three-party conversation with their, someone who’s on their treatment side, a therapist. your child and you and potentially a co-parent, it wouldn’t be just like you and your kid just saying like, okay, I’m gonna lock down your phone because you’re struggling right now. That would be like, let’s think together about, the digital world is complicated. Some of it is not great if you’re really in active risk of self-harm, for example. There may be things that aren’t good to look at and there may be things that you wanna keep off your lease frequently. use device. I was just talking with a practitioner who treats for OCD, and she has clients take their grading app off of their phone. She’s not saying lose the password. She’s saying put it on a device that you have less frequent access to so you can’t overcheck it as easily.

I think we need to look at setting up because unlike a substance you can refrain from, tech is actually part of our lives and often a very good part of our lives. It’s But it can be a good part of your life where there’s also a negative piece. It may be that your friendships on Discord are a great part of your life, but your experience of Reddit is a negative part of your life or something like that. Or it might even be in the same app, but there’s good and bad pieces. So I think it’s really important to help kids figure that out. And ideally, they are also making decisions, just like they might have to make a decision, I’m not going to sit with these kids at lunch anymore because they’re not nice, or they’re not supportive, or the negatives outweigh the positives. They might find that, OK, maybe I’m not going to visit this page or this app anymore. What we find is, especially if kids are really good at tech, building tech walls is something that they’re just going to go around anyway. And then that’s going to become the focus. So if you have a kid who. is a good little hacker, is good with tech. First of all, that’s great, because they’re probably gonna have like a really great career. But also in the meantime, putting like Apple screen time on their phone, they’re just gonna like laugh, ha ha, because I know nine year olds who can get around that. Right, so that’s not a be all end all solution. I mean, I find Apple screen time a little bit helpful for me. It reminds me to go to bed. I mean, yes, I can go around it, but like the reminder. and the inconvenience of going around it is like, oh, maybe I shouldn’t be looking at my work email after 11. Maybe this reminder is good, and so I’m gonna take the reminder. Even though I have full capacity to get around the app, it works for me as just a habit former, just like for me, keeping certain kinds of foods in my house might be helpful. But I think for our kids, we need to be in conversation. And some of that for younger kids absolutely could also be about taking their tech at night and other things. I’m… I’m not at all suggesting that my approach of mentoring over monitoring means, you know, hand your nine-year-old a super-powered computer and a smartphone and a tablet and walk away and come back in 10 years and like see how it went.

Debbie:

Yeah, I appreciate that. And I know that’s something you talk about in ScreenWise is this concept of mentoring over monitoring, which has stuck with me since I read that book, you know, way back when it came out. And by the way, there is an updated edition that just came out, listeners. So it has new info in it that you should check out as well. But you do suggest just kind of before we move on from this topic, that for parents who aren’t monitoring and tracking, that it’s really important to have those conversations. You talk about a code red situation. So what might that sound like.

Devorah:

A kid in an active threat of harm, and especially this is like if you need to get a bed, like say you need to get your kid into the hospital to keep them safe, and they’re denying ideation. That would be a situation where I think looking at their phone and pulling up posts where they made statements that imply otherwise, even if they’re, you know, currently saying, I’m okay, I’m okay, I don’t need to go to the hospital, if you can document that they have recently said, Otherwise, that would be a situation where you could use that as evidence to get your kid admitted. And I think there is going to be in that situation, potentially a feeling of a breach, but keeping your kid alive becomes the most important thing in that moment. Will your kid be happy that you went into their stuff? Absolutely not. But in that situation, it’s worth it. But if you’re just wondering how they’re doing and you have no indication that there’s a life threatening or a serious… issue and you use and you track their communications with friends or other things. I mean, again, like another situation would be, I talked to a parent who was pretty sure that their kid was potentially being sexually exploited by an adult or an older kid. And she did look at the device and she found out that there were in fact that her kid was being asked to send nudes to someone in another country and it was either an older kid or an adult. she was made the right choice to investigate further. Her kid was like, no, that’s not happening. But she just, there was enough evidence. And so I know I’m kind of, it might sound confusing to parents because they’ll say, well, everything seems fine, but how do I know that’s not happening? And I think we have to just really use our judgment, but you don’t want to blow the sort of, I would say like these big guns in a relationship, which it’s a profound, it will be seen even in that case, you know, of the sexual exploitation, the kid still in the moment felt like it was a profound breach of trust. You do not want to blow that on, I wonder how they’re doing. They’re not telling me who they sat with at lunch anymore like they used to when they were younger. It really has to be like, I’m pretty concerned. And also, you can also check in a limited way. So the suicide prevention expert that I spoke with for my book, Jonathan Singer, who does a lot of really important work on pre and postvention in communities and has written several books and professor at Loyola, he said, also, you don’t have to just go look around. You don’t need to see everything they liked on there. You don’t need to read every post. You’re going in with a mission. If you want to see if your kid is reaching out for help, that kind of thing. The other thing we want to tell our kids is if they have a friend with those kinds of red flags, what can they do? What can they do to support a friend who’s in that kind of crisis? And how can they know sort of what the range is like when you’re really morally obligated to tell an adult who can intervene? So whether that’s a school counselor, a parent, that child’s parent, your own parent, a teacher at school. But that would be, again, a friend saying something like a threat of harm to self or other disclosing something like an eating disorder. Like, those are things where you would want to get somebody involved. But, you know, ideally with your friend’s knowledge.

The first choice situation is you sit down with that friend at the school counselor’s office and they disclose. Again, it’s like the last resort is the friend is saying, I’m not telling and you do the right thing. Just like with your kid, it might affect the relationship, but that risk is worth it.

Debbie:

Yeah, I really appreciate and sorry to just dive into really heavy stuff, but I think it’s so important and I think it’s, it is tricky to navigate. So that makes so much sense the way you shared it. I also like that you pointed out how important it is to teach our kids what to do. That’s something that Phyllis Fagel talked about in her book, Middle School Superpowers. And I think it is really important because if we know our kids are having really deep conversations with their peers and they are not prepared to know what to do if a peer says something alarming. So kind of preempting that conversation sounds like a great plan. So let’s pivot to social media. And I do wanna talk, start this conversation about social media by just kind of setting the landscape a little bit in terms of. Kids Lives Online. I know this was a big part of when you first started conceiving of this book was how, you know, kids creating their brand online, kids kind of doing their identity development online. So can you kind of set the stage for us in terms of what is really happening with young adolescents and teens and tweens in terms of how they are forming their identity through the social media they engage with?

Devorah:

They are building their world online in many cases, and sometimes they’ll meet peers online before they meet them in person. Some of them will have friendships that exist entirely online. And in many ways that also mirrors our adult life. I mean, my husband works in a remote team and there are people he knows entirely online. And with Zoom, it doesn’t, you forget that you haven’t met in person, for example. And a lot of kids are using things like FaceTime, voice chat on Discord. Another piece is that because it’s so searchable, I think parents do worry about like, what can people find out about my kid? Like what can colleges find out? What can their peers find out? And kids do sort of snoop on each other online. Like they won’t admit it, but they’ll definitely check each other out on social. Like if they know they’re gonna go to a party and meet kids from another social group or school, sometimes they’ll show each other the profiles online beforehand, that kind of thing. And so that kind of like Google stalking or whatever we call it is… I think just part of who we are now, I think a lot of us are forming impressions of people we’re going to meet, you know, by searching them out in advance. And one of the questions I like to ask kids is how much does what someone would find about you reflect something that feels right? Like does that feel like you? Do you feel lined up with what is shared?

Debbie:

Yeah yeah super interesting I want to talk a little bit about seeking social approval on social media and we’ll do that when we get back from this quick break. So when I think about how pervasive seeking social approval is for young people through social media, I can’t help but consider the impact of that on neurodivergent teens. I mean, because that’s the audience for this show and this community is parents with differently wired kids. And we know that these kids are probably especially sensitive to… feeling like an alien, feeling like they don’t fit in, they may have rejection-sensitive dysphoria. They’re already kind of wired to be interpreting many social situations as criticism or rejection. I’m wondering if you found anything in your research about the impact of social media on these kids who are already struggling to feel like they fit in.

Devorah:

I think that… It really depends. Neurodivergent kids who are in communities of other neurodivergent people and many of those communities like on Discord are integrated between kids and adults, which might make parents, especially of younger teens, kind of nervous. But I’ll just say, like, if you join an online community, you can’t really be sure who’s in it. But a lot of it is very self-selecting. And there’s also a lot of even self-diagnosis of neurodivergence online, again, which makes… There’s a whole conversation about how people feel about that. And that I’ll probably leave to the side, because I feel like there’s other people on the podcast who can talk more about that question. But in terms of kids finding community, a lot of kids will also find each other in non-specifically, non-neurodivergent spaces that might be interspace. So like, say, an anime space might have a lot of neurodivergent people in it. but it might not be a space that’s like about neurodivergence. So I think that both those intraspace spaces and spaces that are specifically for communities that identify, for example, as autistic, ADHD, other LDs and diagnoses, like those are spaces where, you know, kids might come together and feel very affirmed and very connected. Other spaces may feel more alienating, like being in the, you know, sixth grade general group chat at your school. If you’re a kid who is kind of marching to a different drum or socially, that sixth grade group chat might be really triggering or might be really upsetting. It might be fine. It really depends. Or you may have the kid that opts out. And as a parent, you might be like, Oh, I worry that my kid’s not in the fray. They’re not choosing to be in the sixth grade group chat or the whatever, you know, they don’t want to do Snapchat maps or they don’t want to share selfies all the time or whatever you sort of think of or imagine is the sort of typical youth culture, or what other kids you know, your friends’ kids are doing, you might be like, well, why isn’t my kid doing that?

You know, I’ve talked to a lot of families where their kids not sharing any selfies or pictures of themselves online and they don’t choose to engage in that. And they’re like, well, isn’t that what teenagers do? And the answer is not your teenager, right? So I think that every kid is really… different. I have also talked to a lot of neurodivergent teens who play moderator roles on a discord or for a game. And being in that, it’s almost like, you know, maybe you have a kid who didn’t thrive in team sports, but they are thriving as the referee. Like being in the moderator role is really interesting for someone who follows a different set of social rules or doesn’t intuit, you know, neurotypical social rules the same way as ever, you know, some other people do. And the idea of conversations being moderated can be tremendously attractive to neurodivergent people because there are rules and there is a structure. And it’s like, well, if you go outside of this bound, or you know what I mean? So I’ve talked to people who have been really helpful and really also felt very seen and recognized and needed in those communities as moderators. It’s a heck of a responsibility. I did interview an eighth grader. for the book who I don’t know if this is a kid who identifies as neurodivergent or neurotypical, that wasn’t where our conversation went, but she was a moderator and it was a lot of responsibility and she did have the role of bringing to the attention of the sort of heads of the group any talk about suicidality or mental health. So just to come back to our previous question, like that’s a heavy role for an eighth grader to play as a moderator. And one of the things I asked her is, do your parents know that you have this incredible responsibility and she said no and I said well I think it’d be a good idea to share that with them. But even if your kid just says they’re a moderator or a mod, what does that mean? What’s the group? I would have a lot of questions but obviously you don’t want to full frontal but just like over time you might want to kind of try to find out like what are they doing on there and what does that moderator role and what are some of the issues that come up? What is the kind of speech that would get somebody booted from the server for a certain time? Those are all interesting possibilities, I guess.

Debbie:

Yeah, it’s so tricky. Like the more we talk, the more I learn about this, the more complicated it all seems, which is why it’s so helpful to have this resource. Because it is very tricky and nuanced, a lot of these things, and it can feel overwhelming as a parent, that there’s so much we don’t know. We don’t know what we don’t know. And that can be daunting. In the book, you said that social media can be an intensifier. so that if a kid is already kind of ruminating about some aspect, maybe about their appearance or about their life, social media can amplify that issues. Could you just talk a little bit more about that?

Devorah:

Yeah, so a lot of times, you know, social media can be a place for all of us to ruminate. Like I can ruminate like on my, you know, Amazon ranking, or I can ruminate about, do I look older in this picture than this picture? And I think it gives kids a place to really focus. And it’s so quantifiable. Like you can ruminate about how many people liked your, you know, your photo that you shared or your video. And I think that’s really tricky. And some kids get really, really hung up in those kinds of worries, like about how many followers, how many likes. And we might think that’s only a neurotypical thing, but I think it can really vary. I’ve seen people sort of across the spectrum of experience identify that or not. Like plenty of people really enjoy sharing and don’t get overly focused. I think many people will notice who likes a photo and it’s very deeply human to notice who’s regarding us, who’s responding to us. But will it ruin your day? I mean, that depends. It also depends maybe what else is going on in your life, how important that post was to you. But I do see kids getting very involved in comparison sometimes like someone else posts and they get a different kind of response, etc.

Debbie:

Mm hmm. Yeah. And you write about the fact that there tends to be a, an occasional, uh, social media induced drop in a kid’s self-esteem. And I’m just wondering, is that, is it kind of in a time capsule? Is it something that is very specific to adolescents or a phase of a kid’s life and that, um, as they become young adults, they, I don’t know if the word Is it really about this like moment in time?

Devorah:

It really depends. And again, I think for neurodivergent kids, too, things happen at different times than they might happen for neurotypical kids, too. So I think we can’t know. I think for each individual kid, their windows of vulnerability may be different. Like the research shows a difference between girls and boys, for example, but like, what if your kids non-binary, you know, so it’s just, it’s complicated. The research shows that girls are vulnerable a little bit earlier in adolescence and boys sort of more in like mid adolescence. So girls at like 12, 13, boys more like 15, 16, which makes sense, again, in a broad, general, societal way. But if you really have to look at your own kid, for example, your kid may be fine on social media and use it in a limited way. But maybe their first breakup really devastates them. And then they obsess on their ex’s social posts. And they might need support not doing that as much. But also, some of that is going to be pretty typical. Many of us would look at our ex’s social posts. But. if it’s really devastating and it’s bringing them down in an ongoing way for a long period of time, then they may need some support around it, therapeutically, because there’s a point where it becomes really unhealthy. But it is really important to know that there may be some unanticipated changes. I mean, many of the neurodiverse kids I’ve talked to have opted out of most social media and have leaned more into like Discord or gaming, and maybe they’re not using things like Instagram. Right? So does that mean they’re like missing out? Are they, you know, coming of age? I mean, if you have a kid who opts out of something like prom, you could worry about that too. I left high school early. I didn’t go to prom. I’m fine. You know, so I just think it really depends, you know, how you tell that story to yourself. But I wouldn’t worry. I’ll put it this way. I think kids who are going to make social plans with other kids independently need to be able to text. I think everything else is kind of optional. If your kid is not interested in Snapchat, if they’re not interested in, you know, whatever Discord, I think that’s fine. I would encourage a kid who isn’t interested in texting to at least learn how to do it. They may not be interested in doing it the way you think they should or the way, you know, they may not want to be in touch with the same number of people that you would kind of imagine, you know, I think maybe we have like a vision of adolescence informed by popular culture or our own experience. And I wouldn’t try to put that on your kid. But I do think learning how to text and even just I know in my family, like the fact that the teachers now and coaches now use the Remind app is really helpful. And so for my kid to be able to just text his coach and be like, I have to be late for practice for this thing, like that’s really an important skill. And I’m thrilled that it’s not email because this generation can’t stand doing email and never checks. And all these apps at school generate hundreds of emails a day. So if your kid is on Schoology, every time they check their email, it’s like 900 emails. And… None of us would want to check our email in that scenario. So I do think if, you know, again, if their coach or their music teacher, whoever is up for using an app like Remind where they don’t have each other’s personal phone number, but it’s still a texting app, I think that’s a very appropriate skill set. And it’s one, like if you’re doing executive function support for a kid in middle school or high school, I would add both texting and unfortunately, I would say emailing the teacher as like skills that they need. Like they must be able to do that.

Debbie:

Yes, yes. We’ve been working on that skill for a long time. Before we, I do want to actually talk about the school, the grading apps and all of those things. I found that section so fascinating. Before we do, I want to just make sure that we touch upon sharenting because I do think it is a really important concept. Can you explain what sharenting is and what you would want parents to know about it?

Devorah:

Yeah, so definitely sharing about our kids can be a real preoccupation in our society. And they are, of course, great content. They’re cute. They’re funny. Like, why wouldn’t we share them? But I think it’s really important to ask yourself, are you creating a narrative about your kids that they’re going to sort of have to deal with in any way in the future that might limit them or embarrass them? Are you foreclosing opportunities for them to self-disclose or tell their own story their own way? And just if in doubt don’t share it out if you have any question about the way That you know if you think peers could tease them about something if you think they will feel self-conscious later And this is tricky right like I mean I’ve talked to families where the kid You know ended up being like on a gender journey that they couldn’t have predicted right or some other journey that they couldn’t predicted with their identity and the old shares feel uncomfortable and not no one could have predicted them in at the time they felt right to everyone and I interviewed a couple of transgender adults who described their experience of looking at old photos and seeing having dysphoria and it’s complicated, right? But they did understand, I mean, the case of the people I talked to that there was no bad intention and one of the people I talked to, Lenin Torres, who was a famous kid, has to deal with a lot of images, you know, from her past that, you know, where she presented very differently. And I think in that scenario, you know, it’s part of her story then becomes like, oh, I was famous as a boy dancer, but the joke’s on you because I’m a girl. And that’s, that’s part of, you know, her story.

Debbie:

If there are parents listening who have overshared in the past, do you have any kind of best practices for, I don’t know, is it cleaning up social media? Like how can parents kind of turn that around? And is it possible?

Devorah:

Yeah, you can go back and take down old posts. You can put them on private. I’ve sometimes changed a setting on a post from friends to private or just gotten rid of it. I think a lot of us did default to either Facebook or Instagram or another social app as our family album for a time. And I think we may want to move to a more, even if we’re using a digital, it may, we may want to move to password protected. We may want to go back to printing, which seems so effortful, but then you do it. It’s like, so great to have those images. But I do think, and especially if your kid sort of hasn’t gone viral or you’re not, you know, a famous person, like there may be fewer people like have screenshot your past photos and kept them for themselves. So if you do, they may rely on their ability to go back in school. And if you just happen to take them down, like there won’t be anything they can do. And that this sort of creepy face recognition technology is worth at least thinking about at this point. Like I’m thinking about it as someone who posts myself now a lot, like just like, oh, gosh, this stupid technology makes it. easy for someone to do a lot of things with our images that are out there. So it’s worth being cautious for all those reasons and you definitely can go back. You can also just apologize and rebuild trust. If you have a specific post that your kid is upset with you about, even if you take it down, they may feel that damage is done. But if you are really good about not doing it again and you are clear with them that you’ll respect their boundaries in the future, you can rebuild trust.

Debbie:

Thank you. Thank you for that. I want to pivot and talk about grading apps and we’ll do that right after this quick break. So you wrote in the chapter about too much information. You actually talked about ClassDojo, which I will just say I didn’t even know that existed, that particular app. Well, it didn’t exist when my kid was in elementary school. But can you talk about what ClassDojo is for those who don’t know and share why it is particularly challenging for differently wired students and their families?

Devorah:

Yeah, so class dojo is like those old behavior charts in the front of the room where kids would like clip up and down into like red, yellow, and green. And unlike the zones of regulation where the kid is themselves saying where they are, which is a useful tool in my opinion that we’ve seen used therapeutically where you’re saying where you are, this is someone else deciding if your behavior, you know, falls into these different categories. And we know that kids who are gonna struggle with self-regulation are gonna sort of be in the red more. Or be in trouble more or whatever. And this is an online app where you’re represented by an avatar where potentially teachers are using this to share with parents how their kid is behaving throughout the day. So there’s a lot of challenges with this for kids who struggle with self-regulation, whether they’re kids who are neurodivergent or struggle with self-regulation for a host of other reasons. And what this does is it kind of, reinforces a negative cycle around the behavior. It stresses out parents. I don’t actually need to know if my kid got up out of his seat or didn’t or spoke without raising his hand or whatever, didn’t agree with the teacher. I mean, there’s like a million things that I don’t need to know that could be happening during the day that I would hope are dealt with compassionately. And some of the questions of how kids are supposed to behave might not even be developmentally appropriate, you know, for any kids. And what I learned researching the book was Although the most stressed out people dealing with things like class dojo and their kids getting dinged or losing points or whatever, were the parents of kids who struggle the most, which are mostly either neurodivergent kids or kids who have other differences. There were also, and I would say also kids who haven’t had breakfast, kids who had a stressful morning. I mean, I think we could add a lot of kids who are situationally or, you know, biologically going to be more prone to be the kid who is getting dinged, but even the super compliant kids. Even the neurotypical girl for whom elementary school is basically designed more or less, although it’s still too sedentary even for a neurotypical girl, but we’ll say that’s the kid who’s going to get in trouble the least. Those kids were still stressed out by it because the one or two times they did get dinged were so traumatic for those kids that many of them really worried about the rupture of the relationship with the teacher or they were just containing themselves too hard because they were so scared of getting dinged and getting in trouble on this app and having that note sent home. Again, it happens instantaneously. Parents are potentially at the, you know, the settings are different depending how the teacher sets it up, but it can be set up to like notify the parent during the course of the day. So you could literally have your kid get home and like know that your kid was essentially like on read or lost points or whatever. Now some teachers will say, oh, I only use it positively, but Cassie is getting the positive points. And a lot of the most heartbreaking stories I heard about class dojo or where it was tied to a public reward, like going to the treasure box or increased recess time, which just makes my blood boil because of course we know that kids who are struggling to self-regulate need recess the most and to give other kids more recess time as a reward and keep those kids in is really cruel and unusual.

Debbie:

So I just have to say, first of all, I’m super grateful that did not exist when I was the parent of an elementary school student because it would not have been a good scene at all. And I’m just wondering how, again, and I know that your book is not about class dojo, but I just have to ask how present is it or how ubiquitous is this? Is it used in a majority of classrooms?

Devorah:

It is not necessarily in a majority of classrooms, but in over 90% of elementary schools, there are teachers using it. But the genius thing they did for themselves is that teachers adopt it without their school adopting it. So teachers who feel stressed about managing behavior in class can adopt this app. And a lot of teachers love it and think that it really makes kids excited because it’s so reward-based. And a lot of kids get really sort of excited because you get a cool avatar in it. And kids love to like design their avatar. And to be fair, there are ways you can use the app that are probably less and more harmful. So within the app, the app also has a language feature. So if all you wanted to do is communicate with parents into Galag or Urdu, I’m there for you. Like, use the app for that. There might be another app that could do that, but cool, that’s a good use of the app. Or if you are only using it to send pictures home once every couple months of cool projects the kids did. In other words, if you’re just using it to communicate more holistically about the class, but I think once we’re starting to communicate about individual behaviors, making it public, and shaming kids because a lot of times teachers will use it and say like this table versus this table, this table gets to go to lunch first because they got the most class dojo points, then I think we’re moving into very, very dangerous territory that is very shaming, very isolating, and really I think even traumatic. for kids.

Debbie:

Agreed.

Devorah:

And the stories, again, that I heard of kids really souring their relationship with school or feeling like they can never escape it because it’s the panopticon, right? It’s going home to your parents. You go home and home becomes not a place to escape what happened at school. And I think it hooks parents on getting all that feedback. As much as I would like to think I would ignore it, I am a very anxious mother. And I think if I was getting all that feedback, I’d be all about it. I mean, I would want the teacher not to use the app, but it would be hard to ignore what the app was saying. I don’t see how parents are supposed to function during the day getting all this information. And again, not every teacher is sending information in real time. Many of them are aggregating it and sending it less regularly. Some people have it set up so the parent would have to go and actually check. So obviously, with almost any app, you have the most or least intrusive way you could use it. I could set up my phone to like, ping me on five devices in my house every time I get a text message or I could like not do that, right? And so class dojo is kind of like that and the teachers have choices if they only want to do positive points or if they want to do negative points. But again, I think even only positive points kind of cloaks the behaviorism involved.

Debbie:

Yeah, absolutely. Okay, thank you. Yeah. Okay. We could do a whole conversation about class dojo. So we are going to move on, but I do.

Devorah:

But it is popular, just to say. And teachers, I did talk to one school district where they forbid it though, too. And they’re like, no, thank you, you cannot use this. And the person who told me that in St. Vrain, Colorado, that director of educational technology and now a principal said, when a teacher says they wanna use it, I’m like, okay, you need support on classroom management. How can I help you?

Debbie:

Super interesting. So I wanna touch upon grading apps, which was something, you know, I homeschooled my kid for six years, but became familiar with a grading app. I guess it was called Canvas, which is probably used in a lot of schools for high school. You say that they approach… Sorry, let me say that question again. You say that they can impact kids independence and intrinsic motivation, as well as undermining opportunities for kids to develop executive functions. So that really jumped out at me because, you know, having lagging executive functions is something that most, um, differently wired kids struggle with. And of course we want to be building that up. So how are those grading apps working against us?

Devorah:

So one of the challenges with the grading apps, and yeah, my kid uses Canvas too, and I’ve been learning it a little bit, trying not to be all over it because of exactly this problem, is it’s kind of a breadcrumbs approach where it’s like, say you have a syllabus for your whole course, you can see what’s coming, you can plan, you can put that on your calendar. Canvas and other apps like it that lay out just the next assignment and the next assignment, but you can’t see the big picture. And there’s often no accompanying syllabus, at least in our experience and in the experience of a lot of the families I’ve talked to, I’m sure you could use it with a big picture. But with no big picture map, you’re just following these little breadcrumbs, you’re doing these assignments, it’s hard to see how they connect with one another. And you’re also getting the feedback in some ways too quickly because you could potentially get feedback or a grade in one assignment while you’re in another class. Like a lot of high schools, like my son’s class, school has a nine period day. So a kid can be sitting in AP US history and get their calculus grade on an exam or quiz or an assignment. And that’s a little too quick. It’s one thing to get that handed back to you physically in calculus class. It’s another thing to be sitting in another class trying to attend to the lecture and focus and getting that grade or worse, your mother or father is at home getting the grade and then they text you to say, what went wrong on the calculus test? And they’re texting you that when you’re in history. That’s even worse, right? But those are all bad scenarios because they’re taking your mind away from what’s actually happening. And they’re also focusing you on the external feedback of a grade versus the actual learning you’re supposed to be doing. And with parental involvement, they’re also kind of turning the parent-child relationship into this kind of transactional relationship and encouraging kids, frankly, to go to their teachers with this transactional demand for things like, what do I need to do to raise my grade? So it really ups the focus on grades. And I’ve even, yeah, I mean, I’ve even heard, you know, executive function coaches really focus on these apps and I understand it. I understand why they would focus on that, but I just think we really need to make sure we are not kind of becoming a nagging machine because we have this app on our phone or on our computer as well. And it takes the kids out of any responsibility to write it down or remember homework or keep track in an assignment notebook. And it’s also, it’s weirdly invisible because it’s not like written comments on a piece of paper. And so the feedback isn’t there. You don’t know like you may maybe you got three points out of seven, but you don’t know why.

Debbie:

Mm-hmm. Yeah, there’s just so much information. I mean, of course, reading your book and having this conversation, I just keep reflecting on my own youth and what a terrible student I was in middle school and high school and how different things would have gone down had my parents had access to all of my grades, to every detail. I think having information can be a gift, but it can be such a curse to have so much information about our kids.

 

Devorah:

Fair. Yeah, I agree. And I think for me, it can drive anxiety. And they really push you hard. Like when I went to his orientation, my kid’s orientation a few weeks ago, they were pushing us really hard to log in as an observer on all these apps, Canvas and like five other ones, and to put it on our phone, like exactly to do what I caution people not to do, which is to like have it at our fingertips at all times. And to me, like, I know that would drive my anxiety through the roof. Like I do not need to be getting constant updates from that school app.

Debbie:

No, definitely not. Definitely not. Okay, so I’m just being mindful of the time. And there’s so much more that we could get into you have a chapter on sexting, which is really interesting because even as I was reading that I was like, Gosh, I didn’t even know this was like a thing anymore. Because I remember when it was like the new thing like, Oh my gosh, sexting, you have a great chapter on damage to control like when kids do something that causes harm to someone else. And how do we respond? And then you have a chapter on setting boundaries, balancing discretion and disclosure in a tell-all world. And I guess if there’s something specifically from that chapter, you know, if we think about it through the lens of disclosing a mental health diagnosis or a neural divergence and those kinds of things, what’s something you would want listeners to know about how to support our kids in setting healthy boundaries for what they share?

Devorah:

Yeah, I think kids are changing the world by what they share. I mean, I think they really are by sharing neurodivergence, by sharing about mental health, and even things like supports like therapy or meds. Like, I saw therapists as a teenager and never disclosed it to my friends or even considered it. And no one ever said, this is stigmatized. Don’t tell anyone. I just kind of figured it out. It was the 90s. None of my friends talked about being in therapy. Some of them might have been. But nobody talked about it. And so I didn’t talk about it. And now kids do talk about it and I think that’s great. And I wanna be clear that I don’t think your kid has to or is obligated to talk about it. I think if your kid is getting support or has a diagnosis or is dealing with mental health challenges, you don’t have to disclose. It’s totally nobody’s business. But if they want to disclose, we live in a world where that feels like an option and I think it’s a better world because that feels like an option. So again, no obligation, but the fact that some kids… and do disclose might make us nervous because we all grew up with those stigmas. And I think we want to see how they’re making the world better through those disclosures. And we want to honor their choices around that. I would advise caution again, and I really was very careful in that chapter to say like, if a kid is having negative experiences with disclosure, they may need to reconsider how it’s going. Like if a kid is really going to social media for support and feeling really worse after they post, then it may be better not to post. but simply joining a group or even things like changing their bio on social to, you know, like for example, I’ve seen ADHD or actually autistic or odd-y-HD in people’s bios. And I think that can be a real statement of pride, just like we see also queer identities in people’s bios or a flag like a, you know, transgender or pride flag. in a bio and that can be a real statement of pride as well. And I think that’s really not something I would be super nervous about despite the fact that again, like queer kids are harmed and harassed at school. And I was just citing a statistic for an article I was writing from GLSEN, which is a really amazing organization that does a school climate survey about the climate at school for LGBTQ plus kids. And you know, like. 89% of them have been harassed according to the 2021 survey. So if you’re a parent who’s worried about your kids disclosing their identity, that’s not a misinformed thing to worry about. But I would also trust that your kid knows who they are disclosing to in that social app. And another person that I interviewed talked about how actually disclosing saved her a lot of time. When she was ready to come out. putting it in her Instagram bio also made it easier for her to avoid as she put it, the haters. So for her, it actually was a really good step. And so I think had her parents been like, Oh no, don’t do it. They would have not been, it would have been, in this case, they were supportive of her identity and they were supportive of social, but say they were supportive of her identity, but not supportive of sharing about it. And I have talked to other families like that. I think that’s misinformed because I think we’re going by these old standards where we’re taking our old stigma and we’re also maybe not understanding how social media works. And again, I’m not saying there’s no risk to disclosing on social media, but this was this kid, you know, very patiently explained to me. That okay well first of all it’s not like Twitter so I’m not going to deal with sort of the mob mentality. It’s Instagram most of the people who are seeing my posts are my friends anyway. Many of them already know, but this also like save me some time and I would. actually both for dating purposes and for, I’m never gonna date you purposes, really like this to be out there so that people can sort of like look me up and save time. So she found it to be quite expedient. And I agree with that. Or it’s not even I agree with that because it’s her experience. But I guess what I would say instead of I agree with that is more like, I think it’s worth as adults supporting kids’ experience and really understanding. that they know what they’re doing, that very few kids are doing this without thinking about it. Again, that’s not to say your kid won’t have an unanticipated negative experience. I’m not gonna promise anyone that like your kid will come out as neurodivergent and it’s all gonna be perfect. But I think it’s also something where you have more control of it and another place to look. And again, coming back, and I know coming out as neurodiverse and coming out as queer is not the same. I know there’s some overlap there too though, but I wanna use. think about sort of the term coming out and like on Heartstopper, when you see in the first season, Tara and Darcy come out as both being in a couple and as lesbians, you see them going through their posts and actually blocking and erasing the bad responses and the harmful responses and liking the good responses. And that’s a control thing, right, where you don’t get to control. Like if you wear your pride t-shirt on the subway and somebody says something positive and somebody else is saying negative, you’re like in this situation that could be dangerous and it doesn’t feel like you’re in control. When you’re going through those comments and moderating them yourself, that’s a tremendous amount of control. Like I am literally gonna erase your dumb comment, you bozo. And then I’m gonna go to this positive comment and I’m gonna give it a heart. Like what an incredibly empowering experience that is. And I think parents lean into what makes us nervous because it’s so different than the way we did things.

Debbie:

Super interesting. Oh my goodness. We could just talk for hours about this. I find it all so fascinating and it’s just an evolving conversation, right? Before we kind of wrap up and we let listeners know where to connect with you, is there anything that we didn’t touch upon today that you think would be especially important for this particular audience to know about your book, about growing up in public?

Devorah:

I think when you’re talking with kids about this stuff, if you can just try to stay curious, but not too interrogatory, but very curious and open-minded about whether you have a Minecraft or a YouTube or whatever it is, if they’re creating content, if they’re sharing. Another thing. to do together potentially is if your family is kind of embracing the approach of differently wired and learning about differently wired people is maybe to follow some influencers together that you feel like are really amazing in that space and who have things to say that are really useful. I find that I can’t really lead the charge on that in my family or if anything like following like discovery like even just like new. whatever memes, like my kid does not want, like I can’t forward my kid a meme, he’s not gonna like that. But I have heard of families where some, there’s more sharing going on in that way and I think that can be really positive. For us, it’s more like shared fandoms that bring us together. So, you know, we’re watching Battlestar Galactica right now, that’s been very fun. So I think it really depends on your family dynamic, but if there’s a way, and especially I think with younger kids who are newer to being in digital spaces, it’s a way to also experience digital spaces together. and figure out kind of what is making your kid tick in this space or what they don’t like or whatever, kind of figuring out those boundaries of everyone’s comfort and interest level and just even language, like what language is being used in these spaces so that there’s kind of some shared familiarity. So I think that could be really good. And then I just welcome discussion and conversation around these issues. And I do think they play out very differently and uniquely for individual kids. which can be a lot, especially if you have, you know, multiple kids in your life, but there is a discussion guide in the book too. So if you want to get together with other people in your life, or actually it’s on my website, it’s not like physically in the book, but it’s free and it’s on the website, but you can, you know, chat with other parents. And I think in general, chatting with other parents about these digital issues is really helpful because I think screen time is like a weird parenting secret sometimes. And we sort of don’t like to talk to other parents about it cause we’ve all been like parent shamed that our kids have any tack. So it can be kind of awkward to be like, oh, my kid plays Roblox 10 hours a day. How about your kid? Because you feel like you’re not supposed to say that. But if you can have those conversations with other parents, I think it is really helpful to kind of understand the role of these digital communities in our kids’ lives.

Debbie:

That’s awesome. What a great note to end this on. And I love that you mentioned the word curious that I wrote that word down on my notes on the very start of our conversation because that really just seems like the energy with which we have to engage in all of this with our kids and their tech use. So I love that. So where can listeners connect with you? Find that discussion guide and engage with you on social media.

Devorah:

Sure, so devoraheitner.com is my website and all my social stuff is there, but I’m at Dvoraheitner PhD on Instagram. I’m also on Substack and I have a newsletter there and the book is in all the places that you can buy books. So definitely if you have thoughts about it, share them with me. I’m very interested in this conversation and I am really interested in how this plays out for folks who identify as differently wired because… I do think that the digital world can be an incredibly empowering place for people who are differently wired and there may be some like extra, you know, worries for parents of kids who identify that way. So it’s, it’s a lot. I’m not going to lie. I’m not going to say like, this is so easy. I do think growing up in public is like a pretty optimistic book and I do feel optimistic about what digital communities can offer our kids. But mentoring kids in the digital age is definitely a lot of work too.

Debbie:

Yes, for sure. Well, thank you listeners. I’ll have links to all of those resources and places where you can tap into Devorah’s work on the show notes page. And thank you so much. Congratulations on what I know was a labor of passion and purpose and love. And I’m so happy for you that it’s out into the world and it’s going to help support so many families.

Devorah:

Thank you.