Opting out of the Class Dojo surveillance state

Devorah Heitner's 'Screenwise' gives us a better road map for navigating how our kids will use screens.

I first came across Devorah Heitner’s work while doing research about kids and screen time. Her book “Screenwise: Helping Kids Thrive (and Survive) in Their Digital World” was a breath of calm in contrast to the screaming headlines that had convinced me my kid was doomed to a lifetime of obesity and mental illness because I let her watch Pingu on her tablet every morning while I tried to steal a few more minutes of sleep. I was so excited to speak to Devorah about her latest book, “Growing Up in Public: Coming of Age in a Digital World” (out Sept. 12! preorder now!), just as my own child is on the precipice of middle school, adolescence, having a phone, and all that comes with that. 

Tell me a little bit about you, your background, and your latest book:

I’ve been researching kids and technology for over a decade and sharing insight with parents and educators about the ways kids use tech. “Screenwise” was really mostly about screen time and kids’ experience with screen time, but I realized as I was reassuring parents around the country that a lot of people were still very concerned about reputation and digital footprint.

So many people have told me, “I’m so glad that what I shared in middle school and high school wasn’t public.” They’re worried about kids getting in trouble. They’re worried that their kids will share something very problematic that they might not understand, or that they didn’t really consider. And there’s a range of minor to major problems kids can have with reputation, including sharing things that are very harmful, or more minor things like making a rude comment about somebody or sharing a rude gesture or a bad word.

Obviously we don’t want our kids on social media doing any of those things, but we have to look at kids in a developmental context and understand it in the context of a whole community. I think sometimes we get focused on the kid who posted the content, but we need to see that as the canary in the coal mine, this is the sign that things might not be as they should be.

I also think that when adults get involved in a pile-on with children, it’s a really inappropriate use of your power as an adult. We should restrain ourselves from amplifying stuff like that, and deal with the root causes.

I know that mentoring, as opposed to, like, sneakily monitoring, is a big part of what you want parents to hear about kids and tech. Can you say a little bit about what might make that hard for parents?

I think we’re encouraged to monitor by a surveillance society in general. We’re encouraged to sign up for the grading app, for the Class Dojo updates. But I actually think very few parents monitor their kids, and many more just throw up their hands and do nothing.

If you throw up your hands, your kids might be fine. A lot of kids maybe learn their lessons on social media early when the stakes are lower, maybe get into a few dust-ups and figure out what to avoid. A lot of kids are fine.

The things I worry about there are sleep, because not turning your kid’s device off at night can be risky for their sleep. Some kids have a hard time unplugging, they’ll feel like they’re abandoning their friends, so those are the risks for those kids.

And those kids might be at risk if they get into trouble, if their parents have no idea what they’re doing online. No one wants to tell their parents they're sending nudes, no matter how sex -your parents are. Nobody wants to have to say that.

No one wants to tell their parents they're sending nudes,
no matter how sex positive your parents are.

But we don’t want to just catch our kids doing the wrong thing, we want to teach them how to do the right thing. And that involves looking at our own behavior. Kids are very, very smart. I always think about that 80s and 90s drug commercial, “I learned it by watching you.”

Kids are very notice-y about what we do. I’ll say to my kid, Don’t look at your homework late at night on your Chromebook but he’s like, I see you doing work at night.

We didn’t grow up with this kind of tech, and sometimes we mystify it too much. But whether or not you are on social media, I think you still understand what it is to not be invited to something, or to feel like everybody has something you don’t. It’s different to be in a group text in fifth grade, but you still had playground conflicts.

What do you think we tend to get wrong when we talk or think about kids and tech? Are there any myths or bogey men that you want to kind of do away with when it comes to this topic?

The idea that “you should only post what you would want your grandmother to see.” I think kids are posting in different contexts, and that’s fine. If I’m posting on my spam insta with my three besties, my grandmother’s not going to see that. That doesn’t mean I should post whatever I want, including things that are really harmful, but I think it’s OK to have privacy practices, like a spam insta that they do speak differently on.

I might have a group text with my friends that’s different than my LinkedIn. That said, I would never put anything that could be super damning there. That’s an in-person conversation. It’s important to recognize that kids are actually making good use of privacy practices when they do this.

When you talk to kids about this topic, what are some of the big things that you think kids wish the adults in their lives would know or understand?

They wish the adults had more empathy for how hard it is to keep up with all the work of social media. It’s actually really hard to disconnect. No one wants to disappear, because it’s like going off the radar socially. It’s important for adults to recognize the pressures on them. There’s body image pressures, there’s pressure to show up or like everyone’s posts; it’s a lot of work and it does add some stress to their lives. But also to recognize that it can also be really positive. There are kids having really positive experiences with affinity, whether it’s kids who are neurodiverse, queer — I think it’s also important for them to have that.

Tell me something wonderful about your kid.

My kid is awesome. He really wants to make the world a better place and I think he and all of his friends are just really curious about politics, about the environment, and I see that as this generation. I see Gen Z in general as being really positive and really curious and really ready to speak some truth to power. And I think just overall a lot of these kids are really leaning into sharing about themselves, and they are really changing the world and really destigmatizing identities. They’re doing some very cool things. So it sometimes makes us nervous related to them growing up in public, but I think we can learn a lot from what they’re sharing, including pushing against some of these stigmas.

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Thanks to Devorah for speaking with me! You can find Devorah on Substack here: