Rethinking Sexting: Empowering Teenagers and Fostering Consent

Today Virginia is chatting with Dr. Devorah Heitner, author of the brand new book, Growing Up in Public: Coming of Age in a Digital World. She’s also the author of Screenwise: Helping Kids Thrive (and Survive) in Their Digital World and has a PhD in media technology and society from Northwestern University and has taught at Northwestern and DePaul.

GIVEAWAY

In lieu of taking our usual guest honorarium, Devorah asked me to host a book giveaway, which is so much fun. We have four copies of Growing Up in Public from Split Rock Books, who can ship them anywhere in the United States. To enter, just make sure you are on the free or paid list for the Burnt Toast newsletter, and then enter here. We’ll pick four winners at random next Thursday, September 28.

And! If you order Growing Up in Public from the Burnt Toast Bookshop, you can get 10 percent off that purchase if you also order (or have already ordered!) Fat Talk! (Just use the code FATTALK at checkout.)

If you want more conversations like this one, please rate and review us in your podcast player! And become a paid Burnt Toast subscriber to get all of Virginia's reporting and bonus subscriber-only episodes. 

Disclaimer: Virginia is a journalist and human with a lot of informed opinions. Virginia is not a nutritionist, therapist, doctor, or any kind of health care provider. The conversation you're about to hear and all of the advice and opinions she and her guests give are just for entertainment, information, and education purposes only. None of this is a substitute for individual medical or mental health advice.

BUTTER & OTHER LINKS

Devorah's Instagram, Substack and website for speaking engagements. 

Dr. Stephanie Zerwas

Great safer sexting tips from Sameer Hinduja and Justin W. Patchin

Pageboy by Elliot Page

Skylight Calendar

FAT TALK is out! Order your signed copy from Virginia's favorite independent bookstore, Split Rock Books (they ship anywhere in the US!). Or order it from your independent bookstore, or from Barnes & Noble, Amazon, Target, or Kobo or anywhere else you like to buy books. You can also order the audio book from Libro.fm or Audible.

CREDITS

The Burnt Toast Podcast is produced and hosted by Virginia Sole-Smith. Follow Virginia on Instagram. Burnt Toast transcripts and essays are edited and formatted by Corinne Fay, who runs @SellTradePlus, an Instagram account where you can buy and sell plus size clothing. The Burnt Toast logo is by Deanna Lowe. Our theme music is by Jeff Bailey and Chris Maxwell. Tommy Harron is our audio engineer. Thanks for listening and for supporting anti-diet, body liberation journalism. 

Episode 110 Transcript

Devorah

Hi, I’m Devorah Heitner and I research and write about kids growing up in the digital world. My goal is to demystify these issues for parents, educators and other people who are supporting kids because there’s a lot of panic and stress out there.

Virginia

A question we are constantly exploring here on Burnt Toast is how do we foster bodily autonomy in kids? As you know, we mostly talk about it here in terms of food and body size. But as I was reading your new book, Growing Up in Public, I just kept thinking: This is also the body autonomy conversation. You talk about how to help kids preserve body autonomy in digital spaces, and in terms of their technology use. So just to set the stage, how can bodily autonomy be lost or diminished in this new era, where kids, as you say, are growing up in public?

Devorah

Well, a huge issue is that kids have very little control over what other people share about them. And that starts at home with parents. Most of us are sharing about our kids in social spaces. That gives kids a whole record of the way that they look at different times in their lives, and that’s shared with people that they may not even know.

It was a real wake up call for me when my son was eight years old. We were visiting another city and someone recognized him and said his name out loud to him. We have a weird first and last name—all of us in our family have weird names—so he knew it was him. And he turned around and he was like, “Who is this person?” And someone had recognized him from my Facebook. 

Virginia

Oh, wow. 

Devorah

It was a family friend. It wasn’t anybody creepy. My Facebook wasn’t that huge. But it was enough for us to both have this wake up call. He was like, “Wait a minute, why does someone I don’t even know recognize me just from how I look?”

And it made me realize I need to be asking him before I share, that we need to have a consent-based policy around sharing pictures of one another in the family. And that I just wanted to limit my sharing, especially when my kid is young. Because although an eight year old, I think, can give consent, I also think they may be like, “put this on TikTok,” or “put this on your Insta, mommy!” And you might think, “maybe this moment is better just for us.” Because you have an adult’s context about that sharing.

Virginia

Even if you’re just talking about a private Instagram that has maybe 100 or 200 followers—it’s hard for kids to grasp how big that audience is.

Devorah

Absolutely. And I think a lot of us think that teenagers in particular don’t care about privacy, because they can be so public in their own sharing. But they absolutely care if you share a cringey photo of them that their friend’s mom sees, and therefore their friend ends up seeing. They absolutely do care.

Virginia

I have to tell you my wake up call. This was when my older daughter was in third grade. I posted in my personal Instagram Stories a photo—I can’t remember what the photo was, but some funny moment. And she had said, “oh, so-and-so in my class told me about that.” I forget, it was a dance or something. So I posted it and I tagged the mom of that kid, like “LOL, we’re doing the thing your kid told my kid about.” And then I said to my daughter, “Oh, your friend’s mom thought it was so funny.” And she was like, “You posted this?? He saw? Are you kidding me?” She was horrified with me. And I was like, “Oh, right, like, you having this other kid in your class see you—I don’t know what the social dynamics are here. I don’t know if you guys are really friends or if you were just telling me about this person.” I felt horrible. It was just a clear moment of: Oh, right. You need to give consent. I cannot assume that I understand the inner workings of your social network and what you are comfortable putting out in the world.

Devorah

I think that that wake up call often comes around ages 7, 8, 9—once kids have a more autonomous social circle, and yet they’re still very connected to us. So if you’re part of an elementary school community, a lot of your social circle might be also their peers’ parents, and that’s a very tricky place where maybe you don’t want to share about their social anxiety or school avoidance or a new diagnosis of dyslexia or something else. Because that’s that’s theirs to share with their friends or not.

Virginia

In the book, you describe this moment when a lot of kids do get on social media and realize how much their parents have been documenting them since birth and feel really violated. This is something I’ve wrestled with a lot as someone who’s semi-public and writes about parenting. And I have been setting increasingly stricter boundaries around what of my kids goes into my work and on the Internet. But it’s true in these personal spheres as well. How do you suggest parents think about what we’re posting?

Devorah

It’s really important to talk with kids once they can engage with you. So, certainly your 7 & ups, and especially tweens and teens. A 10 year old, a 12 year old, they will let you know. If your kid is saying, “Don’t take my picture,” I think we have to respect that. I have been known to beg and my kid doesn’t want to be photographed at all. I’m like, I need at least 12 a year, just for the grandparent calendar. We have three grandparents, they get a calendar, I need 12 photos a year.

Virginia

That seems like a reasonable ask. I ask for one family photo a year with my older daughter. She hates photos. I’ll be like, “Can we have one shot, one family photo that I can count on?” And this year I got it in January and honestly, I wish I waited a little bit because now there have been all these moments where I don’t get the picture.

Devorah

I think listening and giving them consent, like with so many other things with their bodies and their image, is so profoundly important because it reminds them that when their peers start taking photos of them, they are free to say no thank you. They’re free to go to their friend’s house and have their friend be like, Let’s do TikTok dance. And your kid is free to be like, I’d love to dance with you but I don’t want this on your channel, or I do, and that’s okay. Or I don’t want to be on your YouTube, right? I’ve talked to kids who were even recorded by other kids on Discord where they’re playing a game together and then the kid is like live streaming the gaming session and the other kid doesn’t know. 

So we really want to make sure that kids understand that you have a right to say no thanks. You don’t even have to have a reason, you can certainly be ready with a reason, like my strict parents won’t let me be on YouTube when I’m 10. Or, I don’t like how my hair looks right now, whatever you want to say. But you can also just be like, no thanks. And that’s okay. You don’t have to have an excuse or a reason. 

Virginia

I am realizing I have had moments where I really want the photo and she says no. And I’ll be like, “well, you have to tell me why.” And now I’m just like, “Oh, God, no. Why did I do that?” Like, you’re absolutely right. No is a complete sentence. We don’t owe anyone that explanation. So okay, that is something I can change. Noted. 

Devorah

It reminds them that they should ask permission, that they shouldn’t snap that photo or take a video and put it up into the world without their friend saying yes. And if their friend is putting their hand over their face, you don’t take the picture. Modeling consent is is so huge. I have had parents tell me it improved their relationship with their child, that their child felt like they were paparazzi. It was stressing them out or they were moderating their behavior and not being as silly and loosey-goosey at home. The last thing any of us would want is our kid curtailing their childhood and their innate silliness and adorability, because they don’t want those bunny slippers shared with their fourth grade class.

Virginia

You also talk about having a rule of waiting 24 hours before you post something, even if your kid has said it’s okay to share that. Just because there’s so often that caught up in the moment feeling of, “I have to post this right away.” And if you wait a day, you might be like, meh, whatever, it’s fine. That seems super smart.

Devorah

That’s great for kids, too. Especially when we talk about the age where they might start feeling like they’re being left out more or leaving other people out sometimes. Those early middle school years where you can be really keyed into that exclusion channel in your brain. I don’t need to see the pictures of other people ice skating. So maybe you do share some pictures from that outing to the beach with your friends. Or maybe you sit on it and realize I’m just happy to have these in my own phone memories.

I think all of us are having a moment with social media where we’re like, “Wait, how much of our lives do we need to share?” As the very media changes, as we move from some that we liked before to other spaces and think about how even if I move away from an account, how much of my memories are in this legacy account that I don’t even use anymore? Do I wish I just had it all in one place so that those family photos are available to me. Do I want Mark Zuckerberg or anyone else to have my family album? Like, maybe I want to go back to even printing photos.

Virginia

Another tip I loved was your advice to limit how many full body shots you post of your kids. 

Devorah

I got that from Dr. Stephanie Zerwas who studies eating disorder prevention and treatment. I spoke with her because I wanted to really understand what role social media can play in exacerbating the risk of eating disorders and what the rules should be if somebody is in recovery. She said she thinks that all parents should just limit how many full body photos or things like bathing suit photos and things like that, because it just gives our kids something to look at and kind of obsess over. 

It can become a space where they go back and ruminate and look at their 9 or 10 year old body and compare it to their 12 or 13 year old body with longing or rumination, and that’s not healthy. So, again, that doesn’t mean we can never take pictures of our kids. To me, fully clothed in our sweatshirts sitting around the fire is probably less provocative of body rumination than a bathing suit photo or a gymnastics photo in a leotard or something like that.

I think we all are familiar with the fact that puberty can feel like being taken over by aliens. For some kids, it’s a lot to manage. The body image pressure on kids is intense in that time anyway, in our culture. So it’s worth just thinking about how many pictures you had of yourself from ages 8 to 15 where you’re able to micro analyze things about your body. I mean, for me, they’re just holiday pictures and school pictures. Lighting Hanukkah candles is less likely to be a body rumination moment provoker. 

Virginia

Right? I remember taking a disposable camera on a camp field trip to an amusement park and developing the film later—this was eighth grade. And it was the first time I had that really disassociating experience of looking at photos of my body and not really recognizing myself, and feeling strange about it. And I’m just thinking, that was one roll of film I developed. So, nine photos? When today, there are thousands, right? Your phone is just full of photos. Turning down the volume on that seems so helpful, if even just one photo can trigger big feelings like that.

Devorah

Less is more. 

Virginia

You argue that another way parents are—with good intentions but nevertheless— violating their kids’ body autonomy, is with our routine use of geotracking, and by monitoring kids texts and other digital communications.

We’re not up to texting yet, because my kid is only 10. But I have used geotracking. She has one of those Gizmo watches and when we were trick-or-treating last year, as she was racing around the neighborhood in the dark, I could be like, “Okay, she’s down at so-and-so’s house.” It was reassuring to use in that very specific capacity. But your chapter on this made me rethink it. What do you see as the costs of continually knowing where our kids’ bodies are in space?

Devorah

I’d start by saying you’re not alone. I think a lot of parents find the technology to be both reassuring and anxiety provoking. So it’s both/and, right? The fact that we can do it makes us feel like we should. Our parents didn’t have that option, as we were racing around the neighborhood in the dark collecting candy, and they just had to live with whatever anxiety that provoked. And because we have the choice to, you’re able to geotrack them that way. I think a lot of people do find that reassuring. People I talked to for the book definitely said that. 

At the same time, the fact that you can do it raises a lot of questions. Halloween might be a special case. But are we tracking our kids on their walk to school, even though that’s their routine walk to school? Historically we live in a very safe time, our kid is probably pretty safe walking to school most of the time. The things that we worry about in our culture are these huge events like school shootings—obviously really terrifying things, right? But it’s not clear that geotracking would actually help or make us feel safer if that happened. We need to do things as a society to make the world safer, but geo tracking our kids is not the answer in that situation. 

When we’re talking about teenagers, especially where their independence is really an important part of their development, covertly tracking our kids is very problematic. I think doing it openly in specific instances is okay. Say they’re driving across country to visit colleges independently and we know we won’t sleep if we’re sending our driver who has had a license for six months to drive across state lines. Maybe then we say, “Okay, I’m going to geotrack you because it’ll make me feel better. But also, can you call me when you get there?” That’s reasonable. But if we start geotracking our students at college, for example, which some parents told me they do…

Virginia

That was wild, oh my lord!

Devorah

Many people are still paying their kid’s bill in college. So they’re on your phone plan, but please don’t track your kid to see if they are going to class. 

Virginia

It is a right of college students to be not going to class.

Devorah

You do not need to know that level of detail. Or if they slept in someone else’s room last night.

Virginia

You don’t want to know, it’s fine.

Devorah

You don’t need to know.

Virginia

Not your business.

Devorah

Not until they bring that person home and introduce them, then you can be like, “Nice to meet you.” That’s when you should be finding out. It shouldn’t be like, why did your little dot spend the night two inches from your usual little dot? That’s a little invasive, Dad.

Virginia

It is something to really sit with and figure out how to be more open with our kids about it. And also, can we do much less of it?

Devorah

We want to think about what we’re habituating them to, as well. Think about their future romantic relationships. What if their future partner or someone they’re dating says, “I just want to track you all the time on this app?” Do we want to accustom kids to thinking this is what love looks like?

Virginia

It’s just like letting them say no to photos without a reason so that they can say no without a reason to friends or to romantic partners. We forget how much of what we are modeling for them is going to be what they accept as normal in their other relationships. 

Let’s talk a little more about how to approach what the kids are doing online. For a lot of parents, screen time and social media are these spaces where we have a hard time breaking out of a restrictive mindset. My kids are younger, but I do still carry around rules in my head around screen time limits, and how long should they be on their iPads and all of that. I’m trying to relax my grip, but I admit, this is a hard one for me. Is this a situation like sugar where we know restriction is going to only breed fixation and deception and they’re going to do it anyway?

Devorah

It is really tricky. I do think there’s an analogy about why we don’t want to restrict screens in how we try to restrict food with kind of a misguided focus on health. And: I think with tech, there is a place for thinking about the quality of our kids’ experience more than the quantity. So thinking about their creativity versus consumption balance. This may be where the food analogy doesn’t work so well, because we do want to think about what they’re consuming with tech, because there are things that are harmful. I think that is a little bit different than food. Like pornography, for example, I’m going to say is harmful. There is a lot of content related to dieting that’s harmful. And anything categorized as fitness or nutrition or wellness is all super adjacent to very toxic content for kids. I’m very leery of any of that.

I think there are other things, as well, that things that are just too scary for a kid, like for a 9 or 10 year old. There might be movies that are just too scary or violent, or even the news, I think, is probably content we want to tread carefully with at this point, and make sure at least that we’re watching with our kids. I wouldn’t want my kid to watch that on his own. That’s something I want to watch with him so we can talk about what we see and engage about that. 

So we want to teach kids good skills in terms of media literacy, and we want to help them balance their experience between connecting with others, solo media use, creativity, consumption, all of that. And honestly, the best way to do that is to model a balanced use. I do think some kind of hardcore restrictions can work, especially for younger kids —taking away connected devices at night so kids can sleep, for example, is a strategy I’m very comfortable with as a parent. But at a certain point in high school, kids probably need to learn to self-regulate around some of those things. And if a kid is struggling to self-regulate, maybe you could work together and collaborate on a plan. But I think most middle schoolers are not ready to self-regulate around their own sleep.

Virginia

There is another nice parallel there with food, because we talk about how parents should be in charge of when food is eaten. You’re in charge of figuring out the meal schedule. Like, wanting there to be a dinner time versus a five hour free for all, when kids don’t really get in touch with their hunger cues. So it makes sense, similarly, that kids would need to learn those regulating skills with screens before they’re ready to be like, “I will still go to sleep, even if I watch my iPad until 10 pm.”

Devorah

And the devices and apps are designed to keep us there. So talk with kids about that design and help them understand that these games are designed to keep you feeling like you almost won. Your avatar is going to come back in the next round, you really aren’t going to win. And TikTok has no ending cues. So if you want to get anything else done today, you need to make a plan for when you’re going to stop doing TikTok. TikTok is never going to be done. It’s not like when I was a kid watching “Little House on the Prairie” and then the episode was done and you got up to do something else.

Virginia

On the bedtime thing: One of my kids needs a meditation app to fall asleep to. So we do have a device in the room for that. I shut off everything else on the iPad, except for the meditation app at night, but we’ve had to have a lot of conversations about it because I also know she’s smart enough to figure out how to override all of that if she wants to. What I love about your work is that you’re not making these hard and fast rules and blanket prescriptions, you’re allowing for this to be a conversation between parents and kids. This should be something you’re figuring out what works for your family.

Devorah

Exactly.

Virginia

The last thing I really want to get into is sexting. This chapter, Devorah, blew my mind. I mean, I’m not there yet. My kids aren’t old enough. Some of this I haven’t thought enough about it. But I really did think sexting was only ever terrible. 

And I just want to read something you wrote because they really, really resonated, you wrote:

The uncomfortable truth is that when consensual and private, sexting can be nothing more than another form of healthy teenage sexual exploration, one that often has no social consequences. If we use fear tactics to shame her kids or scare them into not sexting, we only make it harder for them to seek out adult help if they get into a tricky situation. 

And then you went through a lot of the research on this and concluded kids who feel autonomous and like they have free choice don’t seem to experience sexting as harmful, according to numerous research studies, and that’s important. 

This is really paradigm shifting.

Devorah

I’m excited to have the conversation because I do think it’s paradigm shifting for me as well. We want kids to be able to explore their bodies through solo sex, masturbation, and when they’re ready, if they want to, with partners. There are reasons to be concerned with the idea of them sharing picture, because we live in a world where privacy can be so compromised, because we live in a world that criminalizes teenagers for sexting. As a parent of a 14 year old, I’m not saying I want my kid to do it or that I’d be happy If I found out it was happening. I just think it’s important to understand that it can be fine. And that many, many kids —the hundreds I’ve talked to, the thousands in much larger studies—are saying they’re fine. They’re okay. Not every kid gets arrested or sextorted or has a horrible experience. And for some kids, they’re saying it’s empowering. And when we look at even from a public health perspective, it is safer sex.

Virginia

Right. You can’t get pregnant.

Devorah

You’re not going to get pregnant. You’re not going to get an STD.

Virginia

I think a lot of parents today are trying to think, “How can I be more sex positive?” We named the body parts, we talk about masturbation, all of that’s great. And this is another layer we have to talk with our kids about. Because as you say, it’s happening. So to take the perspective of it’s always terrible and it should never happen, it’s just not particularly helpful because kids are going to do it. 

Devorah

We want kids to know that there are risks, of course. No one should ever be pressuring them to send an image. No one should be ever sharing an image of themselves nonconsensually. And to be really clear, this is mostly girls in high school getting dick pics from guys.

No boys told me this story, but several mothers of boys told me “my son gets unbidden pictures from girls,” you know, and it’s like a flirting tactic. Maybe some boys would be like, woohoo! and others are like, this is uncomfortable for me. This is not the kind of flirting I like. Girls pretty universally were like, “I’m not into dick pics.” They were really clear that even a boy they previously thought was cute, might have been interested in talking to more, that was an off-putter. So I actually have said that to groups of boys, like when I speak in middle schools and high schools. I would say it in a really respectful way, because truly, kids are so clueless right now and don’t know what works. Amd to just say to boys—very, very kindly—if you are a boy who likes girls and you would like to get to know a girl and you’re interested, here are some things that you could try. But definitely don’t try that.

If you lead with “you might get arrested,” they’re not going to listen to you because that doesn’t happen to most people who do it. You could certainly say, “If you did this in the workplace as an adult, you would definitely get arrested.” But you can also just say, “This is really off putting and girls may consider it to be harassment. They may report it. And even if they don’t do that, they’re not going to look at you the same way.” It doesn’t feel respectful. There’s a million other things you can try that might be a way of approaching a classmate or a peer that you would like to get to know more, and this is not one of them. 

Interestingly, research shows that queer boys are a little bit more open to those kinds of things, but even then only if it’s consensual. “Can I send?” is still the way to approach it. You don’t just send the unbidden genital pic, to be clear for anyone listening. Never do that. Never. 

But I think kids are so confused about what will work. I think about myself with crushes as a teenager, like leaving poems in people’s locker. Can I be so sure I wouldn’t have tried a sexy picture? I don’t know. I didn’t have the technology to try that. So I think we shouldn’t be on this like moral high ground like, “I never would have done that.” Because think about the outfit you wore to try to be alluring, the time you tried to go somewhere without your glasses on—I’m just talking about my own experience here—and couldn’t see. And then that wasn’t alluring, because maybe you fell or whatever. Your attempt to be alluring backfired. Whatever misguided things we tried to get people to like us, I think these are some of the things kids are doing. 

I think we want to be very clear: They should never non consensually do this and they should never pressure anyone to share. And if they do exchange texts in the context of a mutual consensual exchange and their relationship ends, the respectful thing to do is to delete the photos. Not to keep them and certainly never to share them no matter what, even if you’re really hurt by someone. There is just no time where it’s ever okay to nonconsensually share.

And I think we want to really emphasize that if it happens to one of your kids’ friends—and this is where I really do want to think about a little bit of feminist solidarity, especially among girls. Don’t throw that friend under the bus. Your friends’ privacy has been violated and you want to stick by that person and support them. That’s really important. But it’s just really profound to think about consent and safety and trust around sexting, and not just focus on the understandable fear. 

If you’re confronted with an image of your child that you never wanted to see, or one of their friends or something like that, first of all, you’re in a really awkward situation. You’re seeing your kid in a way you were never intended to see them and they would never want. It’s violating all kinds of boundaries. But you want to communicate to your child, if you find out that they’ve been sexting that you continue to totally respect them and their autonomy, and that your concern is for their safety. Especially if they’ve had something circulate non consensually.

Say you have a 17-year-old in love and you find out they’re consensually sexting with their partner, and you find out because something comes up on their phone and it’s on the kitchen table: I would treat that like you saw them with the half open bathroom door and you wish you hadn’t. Just pretend that you didn’t see that and move on and everyone’s happy. 

But if they’re coming to you saying, “I’m in a jam, because my photo is circulating around because my ex shared it” or some horrible thing, then you just want to communicate your respect for them. You’re so profoundly glad they came to talk to you and these are the steps you’re going to take together. I talk about this more in the book: What are your steps at school? What are the legal rights you have in that scenario? But also let them know how much courage it took to let you know and how proud you are of them. You really want to communicate your respect because especially if your kid is being slut-shamed at school, it’s really important that they hear how much you respect them.

Virginia

I think this is a great chapter for parents to share with their teenagers because you had some other great tips like: Make sure your face is not in the photo, make sure you’re not identifiable. You can never totally prevent one of these worst case scenarios of it getting circulated, but just smart strategies to take and I loved that approach, too.

Devorah

I want to give some credit to my colleagues who I’m cribbing some of those from and they’re cited in the book. Sameer Hinduja and Justin W. Patchin wrote these great safer sexting tips that I cite in the book. I have a few of my own that I added, but I think it’s really worth looking at that. They are cyber bullying experts, actually. So they have seen the bad scenario where it’s weaponized against kids. I think it was honestly really brave of them to talk about safer sexting because I think what everyone wants is just don’t do it. We’re not in a place where that’s realistic. The laws are about 10 years behind where kids are.

Virginia

It feels like a vestige of purity culture, having this idea about kids and sex that’s not realistic and not inclusive in any way. I loved the reframe and I loved all the awesome practical advice. It’s just such a great book and I think folks are gonna get so much out of it. Thank you for writing it.

Devorah

Thank you.

Butter

Devorah

I just read Pageboy, Elliot Page’s autobiography. It’s really profound. I read it because my sister is a huge fan. So I bought it, read it on the plane, and then gave it to her. So now we can like have a little sister book club and talk about it in a few weeks, but I loved it. It really helped me in my thinking and understanding and it’s a profound book about bodily autonomy. Probably a read that other people in your community will enjoy. 

Virginia

That’s an excellent recommendation. 

My recommendation is going to be tech-related. We just got the Skylight Calendar, which is basically an iPad, but it doesn’t have everything an iPad has. It’s a digital calendar that can sit in your kitchen and you can link it to Google calendars or whatever online calendars you use. It shows your family’s calendar in a really clear, beautiful design that’s super easy for the kids to understand the schedule, all the grown ups to understand the schedule. It also has a built-in grocery list, so just a useful family organization tool. 

But a fun thing about it, that I think is related to this conversation, is there is a way to send pictures from your phone to be displayed as the screensaver on it. When you aren’t looking at the calendar, it’ll just rotate through whatever photos you load on to it. 

And I realized when I did it, number one, it was a great way to talk to my kids about taking photos and displaying them. It’s a way—especially for my five year old for whom social media is way too abstract a concept—it’s a way for me to ask, Do you want me to take your picture? Do you want me to put it up on the calendar? And so we could do some consent practice right there and involve her in the process in a more tangible way than her understanding what it means if I post something on my phone. She doesn’t know what that means yet.

And I realized I had less of an urge to post their photos on my private Instagram, because I could just look at it in my kitchen. I realized, Oh, I just wanted to enjoy the photo. I don’t need to share it. So that was kind of a cool thing.

Devorah

That sounds like something I could really use in my house because we’ve tried all these paper calendars and nothing really works, we all have ADHD. I do think teaching kids digital calendaring is super important, especially as they get to middle school and high school. I would enjoy something like this. I’m going to have a look at it. 

Virginia

All right. Well, thank you so much for being here. Tell listeners where they can find you and how we can support your work.

Devorah

You can come check out my speaking if you want to bring me to your community. If you know anyone who wants some support on raising kids in the digital age, I go out to schools and workplaces and speak. And that’s at devorahheitner.com. If you want my Substack that’s Mentoring Kids in a Connected World with Devorah Heitner and I’m also on Instagram at Devorah Heitner, PhD.

Virginia

Amazing. Thank you for being here! 

Devorah

It’s so much fun to talk with you.