Growing Up in Public

How can you help your child grow up in a world where privacy seems to have vanished? In Growing Up in Public, media scholar and parenting expert Devorah Heitner argues that today’s children are the first generation to spend their entire lives being watched — by parents, schools, peers, and strangers online. She contends that parents must move away from constant monitoring and fear-based control toward mentoring and building trust if kids are to become confident, ethical, and independent humans in our hyperconnected world.

Heitner uses her deep research and hundreds of conversations with parents, teachers, and kids to show that while we worry about our children’s digital reputations, we often ignore how our own surveillance and sharing habits undermine their autonomy. Whether through posting their milestones (“sharenting”), checking grades every hour on school apps, or using GPS trackers to watch their movements, adults are unintentionally teaching kids that privacy is a privilege, not a right. The book’s central question is not simply how to keep kids safe, but how to help them thrive when their entire childhood unfolds in public view.

A New Generation Growing Up on Display

Heitner begins by drawing a clear line between our pre-digital coming-of-age experiences and those of our kids. When she was fourteen, a playful summer-camp photo taken in bras lived only in a photocopied zine. Today, that same photo could go viral within hours. Kids now navigate pressures that merge socialization and surveillance — likes, followers, screenshots, and campus apps document their progress, flaws, and identity shifts. Many feel they must perform being themselves while never making a mistake. The book blends compassion with realism as it highlights how developmental milestones — from crushes to rebellion — now happen under the gaze of cameras and comment sections.

From Monitoring to Mentoring

At the heart of Heitner’s argument is a push to replace parental surveillance with guidance based on empathy and communication. Parents have been encouraged to track, filter, and monitor everything for safety — but 24/7 oversight can choke a child’s ability to develop judgment. “We want to teach kids to do the right thing, not catch them doing the wrong thing,” she urges. Mentoring means discussing context (“What would you do if a friend sends a risky photo?”), modeling respect for others’ privacy, and creating a culture where teens can admit mistakes without terror of punishment. It’s about helping kids build character over compliance.

Privacy, Boundaries, and Digital Empathy

The book weaves together stories of parents who think “Kids don’t care about privacy!” with teens who feel their parents are “like paparazzi.” Heitner clarifies that young people do care deeply about small privacy — what friends, parents, and classmates know — while often feeling powerless over big privacy, like data collection by tech companies. Every chapter asks readers to reflect on what kinds of privacy truly matter: Do we photograph a tantrum for laughs? Do we check the tracking app when our teen’s late? Each act teaches kids who deserves access to their lives and information.

Consequences of Growing Up in Public

Heitner explores the complexities of kids forming identities under constant observation — the need to look “good” for college, the risk of being canceled for one post, the blurring of play and performance. Chapter after chapter contrasts the intention of adults with the lived experience of youth. Classroom apps designed to “help” may instead shame; sharenting meant to celebrate can humiliate; and sexting, while often normal sexual exploration, can turn catastrophic without digital literacy. The book refuses simplistic moral panic and instead calls for resilient empathy: guiding kids through inevitable stumbles while protecting their dignity.

A Blueprint for Restoring Trust and Autonomy

By the end, Heitner lays out a humane vision for modern parenting: balance connection with trust, embrace transparency over secrecy, and prepare emerging adults to manage their own digital footprints, healthcare, and education records. She urges parents to focus less on controlling data and more on modeling how to live ethically in public. Like books such as Screenwise or Untangled (Lisa Damour), Growing Up in Public does not demonize technology. It insists that healthy independence grows from conversation, not control. The challenge is not to hide kids from the public eye, but to teach them how to be seen — wisely, kindly, and on their own terms.

Heitner opens the first major section with one of the most relatable modern parenting temptations: digital monitoring. GPS trackers, text-mirroring apps, and classroom dashboards promise peace of mind — yet their convenience hides profound costs. Parents, she notes, often start tracking for safety but end up eroding the very independence they hope to build. She recounts stories from schools where scandals over sexting or viral videos led to panicked calls for tighter surveillance. Every parent asks, “How can I make sure this never happens to us?” Heitner’s reply is disarming: start with different questions. “What do you want your child to learn about making decisions when you’re not there?”

Why Surveillance Feels So Safe

Parents today are bombarded with warnings about online predators, trafficking, and cyberbullying. News stories and social media posts magnify rare dangers until constant vigilance seems like love. A father in Heitner’s workshops proudly admitted tracking his college daughter’s attendance via Life360, texting whenever her icon strayed from the classroom. Others nodded, equating oversight with safety. But Heitner demonstrates that omniscient parenting trains kids to obey external control, not their inner compass. If you always drive the car, she writes, they never learn to steer.

The Illusion of Control

Through anecdotes like “Brandi in Texas,” who discovered her son’s romantic visits by checking an app, Heitner shows how data can inflame misunderstandings. Location blips lack context — is he tutoring, dating, or simply hanging out? Geo-tracking feeds worry rather than resolving it. Teenagers internalize constant surveillance as mistrust, leading them to hide, fake, or create “Finsta” accounts for authentic expression. As one tenth-grader confessed, tracking “makes breaking the rules more appealing.” Surveillance, ironically, accelerates secrecy.

When Monitoring Becomes Mentoring

The antidote, Heitner says, isn’t ignorance — it’s mutual transparency. Information should flow both ways, especially with safety concerns. A teen like Alexei, whose immigrant parents don’t track him but expect texts saying where he’s headed, builds responsibility and trust. Families can draft “tracking agreements” that include timelines for phasing out monitoring as kids mature. Just as toddlers outgrow baby monitors, teens should graduate from spy apps. Heitner likens this progression to a driver’s license: trust earned through demonstrated safety, not passive observation.

The Ethical Core: Respecting Autonomy

Even well‑meaning digital parenting can cross into ethical gray zones. Reading messages, for example, exposes not just a child’s privacy but their friends’. Heitner invites parents to imagine overhearing their kids’ private grievances — would you want to know every annoyance they have about you? The answer reveals whether our curiosity stems from care or control. Ultimately, she echoes developmental psychologists like Lisa Damour: adolescence is not pathology but transformation. To grow capable, kids must experience privacy, friction, and self‑management — including the chance to fail safely.

Heitner concludes that tracking offers short‑term relief but long‑term harm. What truly protects kids is character, conversation, and confidence. The goal is not to watch them perfectly, but to help them watch themselves wisely.

If tracking invades from the outside, “sharenting” leaks privacy from inside the home. Millions of parents post baby pictures, report cards, and graduations daily, thinking it’s harmless pride. Heitner calls this habit a profound cultural shift: family life has become content. In workshops, she asks kids if a parent ever posted an embarrassing photo — nearly every hand rises. One teen, Malaya, discovered her mother’s Facebook full of awkward violin‑performance images and pleaded, “No more.” For her mom, the posts were love letters; for Malaya, they were exposure.

Why Parents Post

Parents share for many reasons — validation, community, documentation, even therapy. Social feeds replaced photo albums and support groups. Heitner emphasizes that this impulse isn’t vanity; it’s human. Yet in combining adult self‑expression with a child’s image, we claim ownership of another person’s story. Kids grow up searchable long before they consent. A thoughtful post today could become mortifying in college or compromise future safety (as when minors’ data ends up in facial recognition databases).

The Consent Conversation

Heitner urges families to craft family privacy policies—explicit rules about what can be shared, when, and with whom. These discussions teach consent as a two‑way value. Even preschoolers can choose between “yes, post” and “no, keep it private.” Teens might set stricter boundaries around accomplishments or relationships. As one NYC mother learned when her daughter demanded old Instagram photos removed, respect means deleting things too. By modeling consent, parents demonstrate that digital reputation is a joint responsibility, not parental property.

Small Privacy vs. Big Privacy

Heitner draws a vital distinction: Small privacy governs family, friends, and school networks — who knows your child skipped a grade or struggles with anxiety. Big privacy concerns corporations and algorithms mining data. Parents often obsess over the second and neglect the first, yet it’s “small privacy” breaches that most affect a child’s daily life. A mom posting about a son’s therapy may not foresee classmates weaponizing that knowledge. Protecting small privacy builds empathy; understanding big privacy builds literacy.

Repair Is Possible

The good news: it’s never too late to change. Heitner outlines steps — audit old posts, switch to private sharing tools, wait twenty‑four hours before posting, and most importantly, talk about why you share. As scholar Stacey Steinberg adds in Growing Up Shared, shifting control back to kids teaches them stewardship of their own narrative. In a world of #DecisionDay boasts and viral baby pics, restraint is radical empathy. When you pause before posting, you’re telling your child: “Your story belongs to you.”

What happens when surveillance moves into schools? Heitner dissects the spread of classroom apps like ClassDojo, PowerSchool, and Infinite Campus — systems that give parents and teachers real‑time access to every gold star, misstep, and missing assignment. They began as tools for accountability; they evolved into full‑time scoreboards. A six‑year‑old’s behavior points now ping directly to Mom’s phone. A ninth‑grader’s quiz grade triggers a text before she even sees it herself. It feels efficient — but, Heitner warns, efficiency and learning don’t always mix.

Rewards, Punishments, and Short‑Term Compliance

Drawing on education thinkers like Alfie Kohn, Heitner shows that these digital behavior charts prize extrinsic motivation (“points, prizes, and pizza parties”) over intrinsic learning. Positive icons may keep a class quiet, but they don’t build empathy or self‑regulation. Children like Isabel, once a confident kindergartener, grew anxious when her teacher never rewarded hand‑raising enough. “She cried because she lost a point for talking once,” her mother said. Digital feedback loops train compliance, not reflection.

When Achievement Becomes a Feed

By high school, grade‑tracking portals transform academics into a perpetual performance. Students refresh scores like social media feeds; parents become backstage managers. Studies cited by Heitner show one in ten teens check portals multiple times a day. Anxiety spikes. Teachers lose relational power, reduced to number‑dispensers. “My students ask, ‘If I do assignment X, how many points does my grade go up?’” one teacher lamented. Learning becomes gaming: maximize inputs, minimize reflection. Everyone’s exhausted.

Creating Breathing Space

Heitner applauds districts experimenting with limiting access — turning off parent portals during school hours or weekends to reduce stress. She also urges parents to disable notifications and instead talk about qualitative growth: “What did you enjoy learning?” not “Why is your GPA down?” When schools equate progress with constant transparency, they rob students of the space to fail, recover, and self‑regulate — the essence of growing up. Trust, once again, is the missing ingredient.

Data, Equity, and Ethics

Beyond emotion, Heitner exposes how private tech firms profit from this surveillance. Companies like PowerSchool sit within private‑equity networks aggregating children’s behavioral data. Even “harmless” systems that track bathroom breaks normalize lifelong monitoring. She quotes privacy lawyer Brad Shear, who warns that elementary‑school apps are “training kids for Big Brother.” The pattern echoes her wider thesis: convenience platforms promise progress while undermining independence. The question to ask isn’t “Is the data safe?” but “What lessons about autonomy are we teaching?”

From middle school onward, kids perform for an audience that never disappears. Likes, comments, and followers quantify popularity. Heitner captures this new adolescence with vivid portraits: Rahul curating wealthier classmates’ lifestyles on Instagram; Sammi abandoning her purple boots after a popular girl posts the same pair; or eleven‑year‑olds staging photos to “show they have a life.” Social media, she writes, is not just connection — it’s comparison amplified.

Living for the Likes

Neuroscience backs what parents observe: teen brains are hypersensitive to peer feedback. Apps exploit this, delivering dopamine in the form of hearts and followers. Kids like Cleo check her post engagement “all night long.” Heitner echoes psychologist Eva Telzer’s research — adolescence rivals infancy in brain change, making social validation thrilling and perilous. For girls, appearance metrics (“hot,” “smokin’”) fuel body surveillance and disordered eating; for boys, the pressure to appear effortlessly confident breeds denial. Adults once critiqued magazines; now the mirror talks back 24/7.

Going Viral — and Surviving It

Fame today can strike by accident. Andy Zhu’s TikTok video about GameStop investing drew hundreds of thousands of views; a decade earlier, viral thirteen‑year‑old Rebecca Black faced cruel ridicule that drove her from school. Heitner reframes viral fame as emotional labor — exhilarating but unsustainable. The message to parents: don’t fixate on banishing public life but coach recovery and perspective. Kids can learn that virality need not define them, as Andy did when he left influencing for real estate. The goal is balance, not avoidance.

Trapped in Old Narratives

When every childhood video lives online, reinvention — a hallmark of adolescence — becomes difficult. Heitner cites Zephyrus, once known as “Super Awesome Sylvia,” a preteen STEM YouTuber celebrated worldwide. After coming out as transgender, he wrote that his archived videos felt like “being trapped.” The internet’s permanent memory freezes identities kids need to outgrow. Parents must help children manage what lingers publicly and advocate deletion when possible. Reinvention deserves as much protection as memory.

Activism and Agency

Heitner also celebrates teens who use visibility for good: Chicago activist Catlyn Savado urging police reform, Parkland survivor Cameron Kasky coming out as bisexual while mobilizing for gun control. These youth prove that publicity can empower when rooted in purpose. Still, Savado notes the toll of being “surveilled while just being a kid.” The takeaway: teach discernment, not fear. Being real in public should feel like agency, not exposure.

In an age that prizes authenticity, Heitner asks: when does openness become self‑harm? From Simone Biles baring her mental health struggles to teenagers detailing trauma online, vulnerability has become a public currency. She honors the courage but warns that kids rarely grasp the permanence or mixed audience of digital spaces. Sharing can soothe loneliness — or attract cruelty. The task for parents is to teach intentional sharing: matching disclosure to purpose, platform, and emotional readiness.

Why Kids Overshare

Teens seek belonging, not fame. Many open up online to “find their people” — queer teens on Discord servers; neurodivergent youth in ADHD and autism groups; survivors seeking solidarity. These communities can be lifesaving yet porous: posts meant for empathy can linger or resurface. Others share to destigmatize or campaign (#BLACK@ accounts exposing racism). Heitner respects their activism but reminds adults that visibility without safeguards exposes minors to trolling, exploitation, and burnout.

The Double Edge of Digital Empathy

The same platforms that uplift can also amplify despair. Heitner quotes therapists like Jacqueline Nesi, who finds venting forums often reinforce hopelessness among struggling teens. Vent channels become echo chambers of pain. Meanwhile, peers moderating suicide confessions online carry adult burdens. Real support, she argues, must come from trained adults and responsive mental‑health systems, not teens left to triage one another’s crises at midnight.

Teaching the Pause

Heitner’s remedy is deceptively simple: help kids pause. Before posting, ask, “Would I wear this on a T‑shirt?” or “Who needs to know this right now?” Encourage them to discuss intense emotions in semi‑private circles — group DMs, in‑person friends, journaling — rather than public feeds. Parents can model discretion by keeping family hardships offline. As pediatrician Ken Ginsburg notes, everyone deserves a “sacred story” reserved for those who have earned trust.

From Judgment to Guidance

Heitner pleads for compassion over censorship. When kids post distressing content, resist panic or spying. Instead, engage: “What were you hoping to feel after posting that?” Co‑create healthier outlets. Oversharing is often a literacy issue, not rebellion — a sign that teens are learning to narrate themselves in fragmented worlds. With mentoring, they can tell truer, safer stories that connect rather than consume them.

Few topics spark more parental dread than sexting, yet Heitner treats it with rare nuance. Against panic, she offers empathy: teens swapping suggestive photos aren’t deviants; they’re exploring sexuality in the only space they have — the digital one. Studies she cites show almost 15% of teens have sent explicit images. What matters, she insists, isn’t eradicating curiosity but preventing exploitation. The danger isn’t sexuality itself but tech’s permanence and peer cruelty.

Why Teens Take the Risk

Heitner lists nine motivations: pleasure, validation, keeping a crush’s interest, proving trust, avoiding rejection, and sometimes coercion. Social rank magnifies pressure — kids think “popular” peers all do it, though research disproves that. For queer teens and those exploring gender identity, sexting can feel like the only way to test desire safely. She compares this to psychologist Lisa Damour’s observation that risk, for adolescents, is developmental work: a tool for learning boundaries.

Consent as Core Curriculum

Heitner insists the remedy is education, not fear. Parents must talk about consent long before romance begins — that exchanging images or texts doesn’t grant permission to share them. Forwarding any intimate image is digital violence. Citing attorney Carrie Goldberg, she explains that empathy, not punishment, prevents harm: teens refrain from leaking photos when they imagine the humiliation it would cause. Practicing “What would you do if…?” scenarios builds moral readiness where rules alone fail.

Shame, Gender, and the Double Standard

Heitner confronts lingering misogyny: boys gain status from explicit images; girls lose it. Schools often punish victims whose photos were shared more harshly than perpetrators — a perverse inversion of justice. The lesson for parents is to challenge slut‑shaming language and center empathy for every victim of nonconsensual sharing. She shares the story of Channing Smith, outed through leaked messages and driven to suicide, to reveal how exposure can be fatal. Judgment compounds harm; solidarity saves lives.

Talking about Safe Sexting

Acknowledging that some teens will sext despite warnings, Heitner outlines harm‑reduction steps from researchers Patchin and Hinduja: avoid faces and identifiable marks, use temporary apps (carefully), delete explicit content promptly, and most importantly, communicate. When caught, kids need calm mentors, not hysterical punishment. With respect and context, sexting can become an entry point into values education — self‑respect, consent, and responsibility in digital intimacy.

In a world of screenshots, every teen is one viral post away from infamy. Heitner’s seventh section, “Damage Control,” explores how to respond when kids or communities implode online — racist jokes, offensive memes, fights caught on video. The problem, she writes, isn’t that kids err; it’s that the internet makes mistakes permanent and responses merciless. Her aim is to replace cancellation with accountability.

From Shame to Growth

Heitner distinguishes guilt, which inspires repair, from shame, which breeds secrecy. Public shaming, especially of minors, rarely reforms; it isolates and radicalizes. She contrasts two responses: Baraboo High School’s Nazi‑salute photo triggered national outrage but no structural reflection; meanwhile, Massachusetts principal Henry Turner turned a similar crisis into anti‑racist dialogue, convening students to share stories and rebuild trust. The difference? One prioritized punishment; the other prioritized learning.

Adults Can Make It Worse

Parents, Heitner observes, often become crisis managers rather than moral guides. Panicked, they defend instead of investigate, teaching kids that the real crime is “getting caught.” True mentoring demands fortitude — listening, naming harm, facilitating apologies, and supporting consequences proportionate to the offense. Communities, too, must resist voyeuristic outrage and focus on healing victims. “Shame without repair,” she writes, “is moral noise.”

Teaching Digital Accountability

Preparation matters more than reaction. Parents should talk proactively about racism, sexism, and online behavior, not just consequences. When transgressions occur, they can guide kids through reflective steps: what happened, who was hurt, what can make it right. Former white supremacist Christian Picciolini’s redemption story illustrates that empathy — seeing “the child, not the monster” — remains the gateway to transformation. Protect targets, demand restitution, but never strip a young person of the hope to become better.

Heitner’s message to schools, parents, and media echoes Brené Brown’s research: shame isolates, accountability connects. Growing up in public guarantees errors. The question is not “How do we prevent every mistake?” but “How do we help our kids recover with integrity?”

In the book’s final chapter, Heitner bridges adolescence and adulthood. At eighteen, privacy laws flip: parents lose automatic access to grades, health records, and life decisions. For a generation raised under constant oversight, both parties can feel disoriented. She encourages families to prepare for this transition as early as high school, shifting from supervision to mentorship in managing information, finances, and wellbeing.

FERPA, HIPAA, and the Paradox of Letting Go

Heitner explains that U.S. laws such as FERPA (for education) and HIPAA (for healthcare) grant young adults full control over their records. Parents who once checked portals or called pediatricians must now ask permission. Rather than resist, Heitner suggests teaching readiness: let teens book appointments, manage prescriptions, and practice phone etiquette. Pediatrician Deborah Gilboa tells parents that twelve-year-olds have only six annual checkups before adulthood — six chances to practice autonomy.

Building Competence Before Crisis

Emerging adults face “administrative adolescence”: juggling loans, insurance, and digital records without training. Heitner’s interviews with parents like Reina — whose son lost a scholarship and later rebuilt his independence through work — show the power of natural consequences over rescue. Step back, she urges, before college creates forced detachment. Let kids handle small failures at home so future stumbles are survivable.

Defining the Parent’s New Role

Mentoring now means scaffolding rather than saving. Parents can discuss consent forms, file systems, and respectful boundaries around communication. Regular check‑ins should shift from “What did you score?” to “How are you managing?” Heitner also notes equity issues: students with chronic conditions or learning differences need explicit training to self‑advocate when legal privacy cuts parents out. True maturity begins when information flows by trust, not entitlement.

Heitner ends on hope. Despite our worries, most digital‑native youth crave meaningful relationships, purpose, and privacy. If adults can release control while maintaining care, we raise a generation ready not only to survive public scrutiny but to lead with integrity in public life.