Coming of Age Online: Helping Kids Navigate the Digital World

Welcome to the Future of Education.

And now here's your host, Michael Horne. Welcome to the Future of Education, where we are passionate about building a world in which all individuals can develop their full human potential and live a life of purpose. And to help us do that today we have the noted author Devorah Heitner, who is the author of the new book Growing up in Public, Coming of Age in a Digital World. Not her first book, but this is a really important one and an important moment in time where we are starting to see both the negative and positive impacts of social media. And Devorah, welcome to the Future of Education. I think no one does it better than you at helping articulate really both sides of this complicated world into which our young people are entering. So first, thank you for writing the book and welcome.

Thank you. Yeah, I'm living in this world and talking to young people every day. And if anything, I think I started over a decade ago with slightly more technology, rose colored glasses and now I'm more in bifocals. But that sort of befits my age, I guess.

No, I like it, I like it. I mean as you mentioned, it's not your first book. You had screenwise as well. But talk to me about your journey into this topic, how you've progressed. I like that analogy from rose tinted glasses to bifocals. But just tell the audience about your own journey into this.

I was a college professor and very connected still to higher ed. But when I, when I was teaching college I had my students, I had written my, my master's paper on Sesame street and taught classes on kids media culture and I had my 18 to 22 year old undergrads doing research about kids in media in the community and they would interview third graders. And in our case I was teaching in an affluent suburb of Chicago and I had kids interview my students interview third graders in a working class suburb and in an, in their own in where the school was, which was Lake Forest, Illinois. So it was very different. And what they got was that third graders are using tech in really interesting ways that were very different from their own use. And that was less than a generation. Right. These kids could have been their siblings. A nine year old could be a sibling to an 18 year old. They're certainly not a full generation apart from and so that was eye opening to me. And then I became a parent 2009 and really witnessed a moral panic around smartphones, touchscreens, tablets, schools using tech more in K12 and how's that going? Colleges deciding if they're going to ban cell phones in the classroom. All these conversations about is tech killing our kids, Is it helping our kids, is it doing both? Is it right? And trying to really understand what is the experience of being a young person and then an emerging adult. With all of this and with growing up in public, I'm really curious about especially the pressures on young people's identities. Like, how do you figure out who you are when so many people are looking at you?

Yeah, it's, I mean, it's such an interesting question because even at that age they're trying out identities, right. And figuring it out for themselves, let alone, as you say, growing up in public, showing it in a very public facing way. And as you describe in the book, this world of social media, it is obviously a big scary place in many ways, but it also has the potential to be beneficial for kids to express themselves or find those communities. So I'd love you just go deeper on sort of both sides of this, if you will, what's the good and what's the bad? Because we're hearing a lot about that right now in the more mainstream media.

I think there's tremendous potential for young people to find and keep and deepen community online. I talked to a lot of young people who had found connections with friends on Discord and via, you know, other spaces. In the old days it was Tumblr. Right. Kids are good at making use of digital communities to learn things. If you even look at the sort of college forums, College Confidential, it's a lot of young people informing young people about like, well, there's a lot of drinking on this campus or, you know, if you don't want to be in a fraternity, this might not be the place for you. And that use of digital community, whether it's information seeking, whether it's supporting a new identity, maybe, you know, if kids are coming out as LGBTQ plus, if kids are trying to figure out, you know, their mental health issues, there's a lot of good, good information on there and a lot of community and a lot of support and there's just a lot of opportunity to have fun. Right. So my own kid is a pretty avid player of a couple of games. He would kind of resist, I think, the identity of gamer because it's not his full thing and he, he doesn't want to see himself that way. Right. But he, there's a couple of games he really enjoys and, and he and his friends are able to play, for example, sometimes for just an hour after homework on a weeknight, which is Not a time where I would want my 14 year old like going out necessarily or. And where kids really aren't right. Like maybe if the other kids were out, I might be okay with it actually. But we don't live in a world, at least in my community, where kids are out very much, especially during the week, and they're not hanging out in person. And so this is a way for them to hang out and a way for them to connect and check in and say hi and have something fun to do that's strategic, that's intellectual, it's interesting. So I think we, we sometimes dismiss these forms of community because it's where the kids are and it wasn't like our experience. Like I did hang out with my friends in person a lot more than many kids in this generation are doing. And we kind of feel bad for our kids because they don't have that. But online it can be really positive for them. I think the downsides are some of the ones that have been brought up in the hearings, but I, I especially worry about comparison kids comparing themselves with others. And you can really quantify your response on social media. Any of us can see how many followers we have, how many likes a post gets. And it's so easy to compare that with others. And adolescents are wired to be figuring out who they are through some of those comparisons. But there's a degree to which social media I think turns up that dial and can be maybe too intense or even worse maybe than comparing with peers is comparing with sort of not real people, comparing with influencers or someone who's been airbrushed or had surgery to look the way they do and that. And so from a body image perspective, for example, that can be problematic.

Yeah. And terrifying for parents. Let's start with them before we go to the legal landscape, if you will, and schools. Just for parents, what's your advice for how their kids can start to get the good of social media with not the bad? And you know, do you think that there's an age at which, uh, they should or shouldn't be on these, these platforms? How, how do you, how do you help parents navigate this world?

Parents want to be thoughtful even when their kids are not on social media and don't have phones. About our own use and how we communicate. A lot of the challenge right now is that we are thumbing out our lives in front of our kids and that they're not hearing us on the phone make communication decisions. They're not hearing us realize maybe, oh, when I scroll, maybe I don't feel good. So I'm going to take a break. So we actually need to talk more with them about our own experiences of using social media, even if they laugh at us. Like my kid, I remember when my, the first time I experienced some like sort of platform anxiety when my TEDx, this is many years ago was shared on Upworthy and I started noticing like more views and I kept coming back to check and of course that's a very short lived pleasure as any of us with any kind of experience online for our work. It's like, oh, this is fun. But it doesn't lead because you know you can have 4,000 followers and then someone has 40,000 and then if you get to 40,000, someone else has 400,000. Like there's no place where you can get to with building those kinds of numbers where you're like, oh, okay, I'm good. Like there's enough. And certainly for those of us publishing books, like, there's no place where my publisher will be like, okay, Devora, you're good, you don't have to try so hard selling books.

You're fine.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, you're all good here. So I think that that sense of chasing clout which we make fun of teenagers for something adults do. And so if we can notice that for example about ourselves and laugh and my kid was laughing at me, but I was kind of like, okay, well I can laugh with you, at myself because this is kind of funny and silly and ridiculous, right? So if we can kind of just be open to those conversations, be open to the conversations about, wait, who do we want to be in contact with in these apps? Why do you think Snapchat has streaks? Why do you think they have a map that shows you where all your friends are? Is this in everyone's interest to have this information? Is this even safe to be sharing this information? Just getting kids, I think tapping especially with adolescents into that natural skepticism that they have so that they feel like winning is using the tools and not being used by the tools. And that's what we all want when we're using digital tools. It's like, I want to use LinkedIn, but I don't want to be used by LinkedIn. I want to use TikTok, but I don't want TikTok, you know, sort of using me, right? And it's tricky because to a certain degree we are the product in all these sort of free apps. But if we can, it's like consumer ed. It's like teaching kids to notice that, oh, if A gallon of milk is $5 and half a gallon of milk is $4, then a gallon is a better deal. How do I feel when I scroll Instagram? If it's making me feel bad, I probably want to take a break. Maybe I don't need to completely quit because my friends are DMing me there, but maybe I don't want to be spending mindless time scrolling. Maybe I want to set a timer on myself. And TikTok was the most frequently quit app of all the apps I interviewed interesting adolescents about because it was so immersive for them. Some of them just had to leave.

That's so interesting. And the intentionality you're speaking about there for the parents and then by translation to the young people using this makes a lot of sense. It reminds me, I realized, because we don't get a newspaper, I'm on the phone in the mornings at the breakfast table reading news articles, and my kids have no idea what I'm doing on the phone. And so it's occurred to me that when I was growing up, I saw my dad or mom, right, reading the paper and therefore I got interested or reading the same articles. And so I've just. That opacity of the medium seems to me a very big barrier. Obviously, then, lawmakers are now getting into this. You've seen all sorts of proposed legislation. I think the most recent. I want to get to schools in a moment because obviously that's where I spend a lot of my time thinking about. But the big one that's gotten attention most recently is a law that would require parent permission before teenagers effectively were allowed to use social media. What do you make of proposals like this?

I think it's really tricky. I. I like the idea of more awareness. I want the companies to be much more responsive to complaints. And I understand why everyone's so fed up. So I just want to put that out there. Like, I understand why parents and educators feel frustrated with these mega companies that don't seem to be that responsive to the concerns of their users around mental health and haven't been as supportive of parents and caregivers and educators. That said, I don't think there's a way. I mean, this would be like saying that, you know, you have to be 18 before you're allowed to have a dime to put in a payphone. Like, this is the medium that all people are using to communicate. And if you're putting roadblocks to that medium, what do you say to the kid who's trying to report abuse at home? Like, do they still have to go to that parent. What if, what if the problem is your parents? Right. And we have to, we have to understand that not all kids even have parents. Right. Some kids are in a legal never, never never land, you know, and they're like in between foster homes. Like, does that kid just never get to be on Snapchat and communicate? What if they're on the debate team and everyone's communicating on Instagram or Discord? Like they can't join because they don't have a legal guardian right now? Like, I, I just think there's a lot of problems with it. That said, of course, in an ideal scenario, every kid would have mentors and adults who care about them, who have their best interests in mind, who could support their entry into the complex world of social media. Yeah, but we don't live in that world.

Right. So we have to take that reality for what it is. So then I guess that translates into the next one, which is, as you know, a lot of countries and several localities have had these suggested or in some cases enacted bans on having cell phones in schools, period. They, they have the yonder pouches where they require them to go in there and you're not allowed to use them during class time. What's your take on legislation there? Or is this sort of the case that it should be more managed at the school level? How do you think about those trade offs?

Yeah, I mean, I do think that every school knows its situation better. And I mean, I, I've really come around to understanding why schools are leaning into the bans much more. I mean, I talked to a group of school resource officers last summer and they talked about rampant fights being broadcast, for example, on TikTok, where it was encouraging other kids to even come to the school to participate in violence. I get why. If I'm running a school and I think there are kids who are going to get hurt or die because other kids are sharing this stuff, I would understand wanting to cut that off at the source and say, okay, if this is exacerbating the problem of fighting and even giving kids motivation to fight, what can we do to reduce that? At the same time, I think again, every situation is different. There are many kids using their phones as assistive devices, both kids who are recorded as having differences in disabilities with a 504 and IEP and kids who may have self identified accommodations that they need that are helping them get through school, that maybe don't have a documented disability. There are kids who have been in unsafe situations at school that They've documented using their phone, so it's really difficult to say. And I know everyone wants the easy answer.

Everyone wants the magic bullet, right? Yeah.

But there isn't one. I do think that when I walk into a cafeteria and I see kids just in their phones and not talking with one another, I do have concerns. Like, I want kids and young people to be able to talk. And I think especially when I see that in higher ed, frankly, because I just. I do remember, you know, closing down the dining hall with my friends and getting kicked out. Right. Having the dining hall close, and they're like, all right, y' all have to leave now. And we're just sitting around talking to each other. And that, that. That easy communication is something that I think in the. Especially in this sort of late pandemic, late stage pandemic is very tough. I don't know if I would have four hours of conversation to have, even though I'd like. I'd love to see my college friends, but would we talk for four hours as easily now, or am I too rusty? You know, after being home on Zoom for these many years, all my conversations be focused and on the hour, that the art of especially sort of untethered conversation may be something we're losing. So to come back to what schools should do, I do think for now it makes sense for schools to individually even experiment and notice what works. It is very hard to make these kinds of policy changes, so I understand, again, if a school doesn't want to just try it. But one thing I've. Some of the schools I've worked with closely have done, especially if it's a K12 school, sometimes they'll have different policies at different levels and they'll notice, wow, our middle school students are getting a lot more done in study hall because they can't have their phones. And our upper school students don't seem to be getting anything done. And I've talked about, you know, can you share that research with the upper school students and see what they want to do there. There might be kids who would opt into a yonder patch bag, you know, even if they don't sort of. It's not mandated because it has helping them focus. Right. And that would be a different feeling than not being trusted by the adults to make your own decision.

That's super interesting because it. I mean, what you're pointing to throughout this is sort of the sense of agency that all individuals want to develop in a sense of mattering right. In all of this and not, not, not dismissing that as. As you sort of make these well intentioned rules at whatever level you ultimately do as a school, as a lawmaker or whatever it might be. I'm sort of curious. You have this other part in the book which relates to college, which I had not honestly thought about until I read it, but then it made all the sense in the world and I had this horrified reaction which was parents sharing their kids college decisions in social media. It seems like parents are making a lot of faux pas themselves perhaps around sharing news that is not theirs is the way I might say it. Yeah, to me that I probably violate this. You know, I think I'm doing it less. I've sort of gone on a no kids on social media, but I'm sure I violated that when they were young as well. So I'm sort of curious how you think about that.

Well, all our families, I mean, I started, you know, my. I became a parent in 2009, so it was like right in that early Facebook years. And so I also, you know, shared my kid a little bit and was like not thinking as much about the future. And then as I started leaning into writing about privacy and now I have a skeptical teenager who knows I write about privacy. So, you know, God help me if I share him now without permission given that he knows what I do. But the college thing is such a good example because kids are sharing a lot with one another and yet they're much more thoughtful about the audience they know. If my best friend applied early to Amherst, say, and I did too, I know that's going to be a complex thing for us this year. And I also know like the kids are confident their friendships can survive it. Right. But they are more thoughtful about how to share that information and what to do with that information and how to process it and how to support one another frankly when denials happen, which is obviously so many of our kids experience and especially low these last dozen years, and I love them for that. I'm so impressed with how young people have found ways to communicate about this and have their own etiquette around it. And when their parents undermine that, it really is a problem and it puts tremendous pressure on young people. Even talking about the visits puts a lot of pressure on young people then because then Uncle John knows that you visited Madison and he went there and why didn't you decide to apply or whatever it is. All of that is really hard. So the less the better, I think on that front. And taking a cue from the kids is really thinking about the audience and how people will Feel.

It makes a ton of sense and just having that sensitivity on all sides. As you're navigating this in the book you also talk about how not just parents but also schools have so many more tools to monitor children, often communicating behind their back. We know online grade books and all those things. Right. That that have increased some of the helicopter parenting and other things of that nature. I just love your take at both levels. Right. This is elementary school all the way through high school and even into college sometimes. What are the risks of these apps and what are the ones that give you concerns out there right now?

Yes, I wrote a lot in the elementary school years about a behavior monitoring app called Class Dojo. Not to pick on Class Dojo, they seem like nice people but because there's something very insidious about monitoring behavior and especially the sort of micro choices and experiences kids have with regulation like raising your hand or speaking, speaking out of turn, that kind of stuff. And, and the apps use a gamification of behavior modification that really concerns me. So that that level of like you're competing for points, it's all externalized, you know, extrinsic, extrinsic rewards and it just tends to lean into rewarding the kids who are naturally more self regulated which like broadly in elementary school is like girls, you know, versus boys but even more so like some kids versus other kids. Like neurotypical kids versus non neurotypical kids, kids who had breakfast versus kids who didn't get breakfast. There's all kinds of ways and reasons why some kids are consistently more self regulated than others and even those kids can become quite anxious. I interviewed several parents of, for example, like very typically well behaved neurotypical girls who were kind of like this at the edge of their seat stressing about these apps and worrying about losing points that one time they did call out without raising their hands. And instead of seeing that as like wow, they must have been really enthusiastic about that answer. There's this denigration and so kids get really stressed about all of this. And then I would go in the book, I trace that all the way up through the apps, the grade books, which we can come back to in a minute. But I want to talk about Naviance with you because. And the other ones, Maya learning and Scoir, which I don't even know how to say it. All the apps that kids or high school students use to quantify the data, put the recommendations together and there's tremendous convenience to having that all in one place especially. And that plus the common app I think is driving some of the sort of, I would say, over application, but that much higher numbers. I mean, you're talking to someone who applied to three colleges, right? And I live to tell the tale, and I have a PhD in everything. Right, but. But the number of colleges, of course, are much higher and it's because there's so much aggregate data. But the thing that, the things that concern me a lot about Navions are, First of all, PowerSchool owns it. So you're taking the people who have your kids grades, they have some of this behavior data. Then they also own all the stuff they put into college. That's a lot of data about someone for, you know, 17, you know, 16, 15 years of formal education from age, you know, potentially 4 to 18. A lot of personal info in there, right? Suspensions, expulsions, behavior data, anything a counselor may have written down. Like a lot of that data is just in there. I don't like it being digital and being available, even if it doesn't all get shown, for example, to the college. Like that raises concerns. And then how do I feel as a college applicant getting to be seeing my dot on the app? And I've already looked at what my learning looks like for my son's school and it's kind of crushing, right? You see your little dot on the app and then you see where other dots are and there's a line. So if you're looking at a specific university where students from your child's high school have applied or they're looking at the. And one of the things my editor wouldn't let me use in the book was an article. Now I'm gonna have to link to it in your show notes was an article from a kid at a prep school. We'll decide if we can use this. But my editor was like, it's too mean. A kid at a prep school in Chicago where I live, writing about the first day they got access to Naviance and how people cried when they saw their chances on the chart. Yeah. Yeah.

Wow.

I mean, it was written in kind of a slightly sarcastic, slightly, you know, high school mean kind of way. And so I think that's why my editor didn't like it. And I, I see why she didn't like it, but I thought, no, this is something people need to know that people get on this app and it makes them cry. And I'm not saying, by the way, that we can protect kids from the realities of admission. I, I think people need to go in with their eyes open and also radically Rethink what's so important about whatever 10 or 20 name brand schools they're so obsessed with. All of that is important. But I think there needs to be more sensitivity in how we handle that data as well. And what we know, especially for students who don't have good access to counseling, is they can underreach because the data is so sobering that what you can see, and this is, I mean this was what was so interesting about the Dartmouth article in the New York Times the other day is seeing with sats too that with test optional students were underreaching.

But it's so interesting because, so like a class dojo, for example, I know those folks well. I know the teachers who use them that would say like, that's all well and good, I'm sure that's great in theory, but like, gosh, it really helps me keep, you know, the class in line and they're learning more and it's so helpful. What would you tell the teacher? I guess around what they might do instead or how they might reframe.

You.

Know, the, the system in effect that you're talking about.

Yeah, I mean, I would lean into. Because I, I don't presume to mentor K12 teachers. Like I do a lot of PD, specifically around social and emotional stuff and kids digital milestones. So I, I presume to talk to teachers about that. But like classroom management, I would say like lean into your other professional cohorts and your principal and other people who have good experience. Lean into referrals and making sure that kids who are needing special ed actually get it. You know, because there's a tremendous under, I think, I think under diagnosis and under support in some schools where kids aren't getting, you know, if you're really having trouble supporting a kid's behavior, like maybe there's more going on, you know, if none of the tricks you're trying are working, maybe they need more support and those colleagues could also be helping you. But one of the things that I learned from a teacher in, and actually a principal in St. Vrain, Colorado was she doesn't allow them to use class dojo. And she said, if you feel like you need class dojo, come see me and I'll sit in your class, I'll help you. You know, we'll work together. So I, I like that level of support and I think all teachers ideally need that. Like they need a principal who's willing to come and, and help them with class classroom management and mentor them. But she sees it as a sign of like, okay, you feel like you're drowning. What can I do to support you so that you don't have to do this? Because the short term compliance is not leading to long term better behavior and not leading to internalized self regulation. And it can really harm kids. I mean the extreme examples that I gave and I know not every teacher uses classdojo in the same way and I do want to acknowledge like it has a translation feature that's clearly positive. Like if you need to speak to that parent in Urdu, you know, and you can do it through class dojo, I think that's a great use of that app. The problem is things like kids getting denied recess or there's a prize for all the kids who are well behaved and the kids who already struggle. I mean you have to figure a kid who's struggling to self regulate is already having a terrible time at school, already probably doesn't like school. Then you give a party to the other kids and make those kids watch. Like that's. You're talking about potentially ending someone's education trajectory early. You're increasing the likelihood that they may drop out. I mean you're harming their self esteem in ways that are lasting. It's not worth it. Even if you get short term compliance out of it, it's not worth it.

Yeah, I know, that's. I couldn't agree more. As we wrap up here, it strikes me that there's a consistent theme across a lot of this which is that sort of a zero sum world of comparison where one gets the, you know, the prize, the other doesn't. Even though we're trying to develop both or social media. That's true too. I'm comparing my likes versus yours or whatever it is that ultimately that zero sum view as opposed to a positive sum view of like hey, we're all trying to be the most unique version, you know, of our best selves because the system is so built around the former as opposed to the latter. All, all of these apps, in some ways they may not have created the conditions, but they're perhaps turbocharging the negative parts of that. Is that a fair way to.

I think so. And I think the grading apps, which we didn't really get to where parents can just check kids grades, it also can undermine the relationship with teachers. And I think that's really important, that three way triangle of student, teacher, parent, all of those relationships can get strained when there's too much access to information that's too frequent. Right. We don't want too little feedback in education. But A grade shouldn't be the only feedback. And maybe, I think maybe aren't the best kind of feedback. But so that's a whole big, you know, that's a whole big conversation. And I kind of like nibbled on that in the book, but I don't want to bite it totally off the. So but there's that. But then it's like, what's it going to do to the relationship with the teacher? Or, you know, and a high school teacher might have 180 students a day. Some may have more, you know, so even just remembering in your email etiquette, as I try to remember to do to like always put my student's name and ID number, even though I think they probably know who I am because I'm that parent, they probably do know who I am. I still feel like, let me identify myself because this person has hundreds of students in a day and just thinking about, do you want to be writing to them about that zero or do you want to wait and see what happens? Do you want to let your kid self advocate figure out what they need to do? Or is the grade just not been entered yet and you're starting a feedback loop of anxiety because of a grade that hasn't been entered? Right. And so this is, this is why some schools are closing their grade books. This is why Challenge Success is recommending limited access to them. I've just talked to a bunch of schools that don't have them and I think that's great. But many, many schools do. Most people, most people who work at schools or have students in school are probably encountering online grades and the pressure from the school to check. My son's school will tell me, check canva. Check canva. That's just one of their big messages.

No, it makes total sense. Look, we could go in a number of different directions and keep geeking out on this, but with respect to your time and the audiences, I can't recommend the book more. Growing up in Public, Coming of age in a Digital world. There it is. We will flash it up as well. But I think it is a great resource, like I said at the beginning, to really get at the nuance in what has become a very polarized, good, bad social media. Yes. No sort of conversation. And see, there are upsides and there are a lot of risks as well that we need to bear in mind. So thank you for helping us think through it. Thank you for helping schools think through it and thank you for helping parents and students navigate their way in something that none of us have dealt with before.

Thank you.

And for all of you tuning in, we'll be back. Next time on the Future of Education.

Sam.