Eps 504: Teaching teens self-regulation with screens with Devorah Heitner

What does joyful courage mean to you

Joyful courage does mean being open to learning new things, including having my kid teach me about a new game or a new app and not always assuming the worst.   When I hear about something new, like AI – there’s that initial clinch of nervousness and there are implications that concern me, but also being open to what this can bring that’s positive.

 

Resources

Devorah on Instagram

Devorah on Substack 

Devorah’s website & Free SOS Guide 

Devorah’s New Book: “Growing Up in Public: Coming of Age in a Digital World”  

“Rescuing Our Sons” by Dr. John Duffy

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Transcription

SUMMARY KEYWORDS
kids, feel, parents, talking, influencers, friends, adolescent, conversations, app, experience, phone, shared, instagram, work, viral, digital age, real, behaviour, important, people
SPEAKERS
Devorah Heitner, Casey O'Roarty

Casey O'Roarty 00:02
Hey, welcome to the joyful courage podcast a place for inspiration and transformation as we try and keep it together. While parenting our tweens and teens. This is real work people and when we can focus on our own growth, and nurturing the connection with our kids, we can move through the turbulence in a way that allows for relationships to remain intact. My name is Casey already I am your fearless host. I'm a positive discipline trainer, space holder coach and the adolescent lead at Sprout double. I am also the mama to a 20 year old daughter and 17 year old son walking right beside you on this path of raising our kids with positive discipline and conscious parenting. This show is meant to be a resource to you and I work really hard to keep it real, transparent and authentic so that you feel seen and supported. Today is an interview and I have no doubt that what you hear will be useful to you. Please don't forget sharing truly is caring. If you love today's show, please pass the link around snap a screenshot posted on your socials or texted to your friends. Together we can make an even bigger impact on families all around the globe. I'm so glad that you're here. Enjoy the show.

Casey O'Roarty 01:24
All right. Welcome back friends. My guest today is Devorah Heitner. Devorah is the author of growing up in public coming of age in a digital world which is a new book, as well as screen wise helping kids thrive and survive in their digital worlds. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, and the Atlantic. She has a PhD in media, technology and society from Northwestern University, and has taught at DePaul and Northwestern she's delighted to be raising her own teenager and she lives with her family in Chicagoland. You can follow her on Instagram at Devorah Heitner PhD and join her list and get her free SOS guide by using the link in the show notes. Hi, Tamara, welcome to the podcast.

Devorah Heitner 02:15
Hi,

Casey O'Roarty 02:16
I'm so glad to have you here having me. Yeah, we met at the Zen parenting conference. Hopefully you remember you met a lot of it

Devorah Heitner 02:23
was really fun. Super fun.

Casey O'Roarty 02:26
It was so so fun. I had such a great time. I've already talked at length about it here on the pod. And I really, really appreciated everything you had to say during your talk. Thank you for being the voice that you are supporting all of us raising kids and what feels like the wild west of the digital age. Thank you.

Devorah Heitner 02:49
It is a wild world. And as we were just talking about before we started, it just keeps getting back here. It

Casey O'Roarty 02:56
just keeps getting wackier. And I was just talking to an old friend about raising teens right now this generation of kids and how it is so crazy that they don't have any before time, like they have no memory of before these little handheld computers and social media, they've always known the digital age. So talk to me about why you wrote and what inspired your latest book Growing up in public coming of age in the digital

Devorah Heitner 03:28
world. So I wrote growing up in public because parents are freaking out about their kids not having, you know, any understanding of before time, as you say, and especially the concern about kids potentially going viral for the wrong reason kids being in a situation where you know, something they shares kind of comes back to bite them or, you know, gets shared in a way that's unanticipated. And I think, you know, this is something that we frankly, you know, just didn't have to deal with when we were kids. Like when we were kids, we did stupid stuff sometimes and people didn't find out about it, you know, outside of our little world. And so our kids are in a world where their behaviour is much more scrutinised much more shareable. And once it's out there, it's also more permanent and hard to kind of move beyond.

Casey O'Roarty 04:14
Yeah, parents are freaking out. I mean, it feels like it can feel like a freefall. Right. And my people are parents of teenagers, that's who I've talked to and we talk about a variety of challenges that are typical and appropriate that show up in the adolescent years. Some of it is a little bit more off the rails than others. But this screen thing is so hard to navigate and a lot of the parents not a lot but I have a few parents that it's gotten to the point where they've given up because even bringing up a trying to have a conversation around it is met with such aggressive energy defiance. Like I'm not even have this conversation with you. You What are you seeing? Because you talk to the kids and the parents, what are you seeing as that dynamic between parents and teens right now when it comes to screen use.

Devorah Heitner 05:12
So I think one of the big breakdowns, you know, one of the big breakdowns between kids and their parents, it's just understanding the ways kids are using tech and how essential you know, for example, the group text or Snapchat or discord might feel to your child, it might feel like I mean, this is really where their friends live. And so not having that would be like if we grew up in a house that didn't have a phone on the wall. Now, that said, we still may want our kids not to, you know, have access to her their phones all the time, it may not be necessary for them to go to sleep with them, etc. Just like we didn't get a lot of calls probably at 2am when we lived with our parents, but it is really a very intense part of their connection to this sort of world of their of their friends. And I think it's hard for parents to understand sometimes why is my kid on their phone all the time? Why can't they you know, leave it in another room and go somewhere else without it. And they're worried they might miss something? Yeah,

Casey O'Roarty 06:03
I mean, I think about being a teenager and having access, I would have had it in my pocket all the time to think it makes sense. It makes sense. And it's so hard. I mean,

Devorah Heitner 06:19
that's their life, right? That's their commute. Yeah.

Casey O'Roarty 06:21
Well, and I think do you find too, I think like, Yes, from the parent perspective, it feels like the entire world is in their pocket. Like we forget that there's hopefully mostly it's this like little community of their people. Do you think that that is something that shows up for parents around but it's also all those strangers? Right,

Devorah Heitner 06:43
exactly. And it is a lot, it is a lot to navigate that people can see you and you can feel judged by so many people.

Casey O'Roarty 06:49
Yeah, yeah. During your talk in Chicago, one of the things that I wrote down that I really appreciated was when you talked about doing more mentoring, and less monitoring with our kids and their screens. And I want to get into that, because for every parent that has said, like, whatever I can't control, this is another parent that is glued to the school portal, or to life 360 Or is just constantly looking to catch their kid doing the wrong thing over perhaps over monitoring them. So talk about that. What is mentoring look like in this period of time, digital age? Yeah, I

Devorah Heitner 07:32
mean, mentoring is really engaging with our kids about how they're using tech, how it makes them feel what they noticed about their own experiences online, it really goes beyond just sharing, you know, some pointers, right, we actually want to talk with them about our experiences online as well. And, you know, if we've had a conflict via text message that we resolved by talking in person, that's a great thing to share with our kids, for example. And that's mentorship looks like it's not just about teaching kids like right from wrong, or catching them doing the wrong thing. Because if we're just trying to kind of tell our kids to colour inside the lines, that's not really going to help set them up for success as adults with as communicators and really what we're teaching our kids when we're teaching our kids how to use text, so much of it is about actually their communication and interpersonal skills, and we have years of experience so we can help them. Yeah,

Casey O'Roarty 08:21
well, it's funny, the whole Find My Phone thing, like, I'm just going to tell a personal story here. So I'm in a new relationship with that app, because I really like to be able to see where my kids are. And I realised like, it makes me feel like, oh, look, they're right, where they said they would be, I don't bug them, you know, like, where are you right now. So I've, in my mind, I've justified it. And I was recently out of town at a wedding with friends from high school. And, you know, all of us have teenagers. And we started talking about it. And I was so excited and surprised by how many of them were like, I don't track my kids. Why do I need to track my kids? And I thought it almost felt like permission Devorah of like, oh, I don't have to. And granted my kids are? I mean, I have a 21 year old, but I know where she is. Do I need to know where she is? I could just ask her where she is. But it's so interesting that because we can, it seems like we do. Right? And with the school stuff like, you know, in your conversations, I'm sure that parents justify just like they justify getting their fifth grader a phone. You don't need to get your fifth grader a phone. I don't think everyone by the way. You know, there's all this justification that happens. And you know, like, how do we untangle ourselves from that?

Devorah Heitner 09:40
Yeah, I think it's important to understand that the more data we have, the more anxious we might feel so for checking our kids location constantly, it may make us feel more anxious. Now there are families that say it makes them feel less anxious and if the kids and everyone are opted in and you don't mind your kids tracking you and you know, it feels like it works for you. I'm not here to say that it's a disaster. I just think we need to ask ourselves with all of this ability to surveil one another? Is this actually making us more stressed or less stressed? And what are the implications of it? Like? Are we getting our kids used to being surveilled? What if your kid we had a romantic partner that wanted to surveil to their location via an app? Would you think that was healthy? Would you be concerned about that in any way? Oh,

Casey O'Roarty 10:17
yes, I would. Yes, I would.

Casey O'Roarty 10:25
I would I love that too. Because what I'm hearing you say is the same thing when you were talking about mentoring our kids, right? Like, how does it feel to track your kids? Do you feel more anxious? Does it make you feel more relaxed? What are you waiting for? I remember, you know, my daughter was a little bit more on the sneakier side than my son when she was a younger teenager. And I was watching her walking through that neighbourhood that she was supposed to be in. I mean, I can actually feel my body get activated, thinking back to, you know, six years ago from when, you know, that was the case. And it didn't shift anything. It just in fact it you know, we probably got into she knew I was watching. It was never a secret. But yeah, it almost feels like it is an ever more of an invitation for a power struggle. And for our kids to say, Oh, really watch, watch what I can do. Because it turns out, I can walk out the door and do whatever I want. So yeah, but what about limits and boundaries? And phones and social media? Like, how do those come into play? Because my guess is you're not saying like, you know, good luck with that, right?

Devorah Heitner 11:33
Yeah, ideally, we want to teach kids to notice how they're feeling when they're using an app or a specific device. So if they're attending to how they feel when they use it, they can start to work on self regulation. But that's a scaffolded process, I wouldn't just hand an 11 year old a phone and be like, good luck with this. Right? I would definitely, you know, even if before you give a kid a phone, let them know what the limits and expectations are, where it's going to live, what apps they're allowed to get. But then over time, the idea is they will learn to self regulate, and they will deal with when things go wrong, there are a couple of things where I feel like self regulating, if it's not going well is too dangerous. You know, like, if I saw my kid texting and driving, then they wouldn't be able to drive for a while or, you know, I would make sure that they were setting out with their phone turned off. Right, I think it's really important that if something has really severe consequences, like texting and driving, where you could die or kill someone that's a little bit different than like, if you stay up too late one night, obviously, if you stay up too late every night, you're going to trash your physical and mental health. But experiencing the consequences of getting distracted, you know, in the home or staying up too late, is something that for older teenagers, before they're going to launch into the world might be a good thing to experience to see like, okay, there's a price to be paid for this, that might not be something you're comfortable with in middle school, you might just take the phone at night, so your kids can get some sleep. So I think it really depends where your kid is at developmentally. And what the stakes are in terms of how much you're going to, you know, encourage them to self regulate and hope for the best if you're going to let them experience the consequences of failure or if you're going to intervene in some way. Yeah.

Casey O'Roarty 13:01
Well, and I appreciate the distinction, especially between like, one late night versus Is this a chronic problem? Mm hmm. Right, because we know how important sleep is. And I mean, our kids are struggling. And it would be amazing to somehow magically get them all nine hours of sleep every night and see what happened to the mental health epidemic that were with adolescents, right? If everybody was well rested, how that affected, you know, how they were feeling out in the world. You know, I really love that. And it's something that I say to parents as well, this is going to look different at 13 than it does at 15 than it does, you know, my son's 18. He's going to college next year. You know, and I say explicitly what you just said, which is, I want you to be able to be reflective on your use of this thing. And really most like this is kind of a big conversation that can fit into all these different contexts, but with the phone especially, and we will regularly whip out our phones, or I will i am instigating it saying like, let's compare, you know, because my phone uses not great. You know, so I think it's really like just being able to normalise those conversations. And your book is such a great resource for you know, thinking about all the different conversations that we get to be having and everybody I want you to listen to the choice of words like a conversation is not me talking at my kid. A conversation is a lot of questions, a lot of curiosity, a lot of listening and learning from their perspective, as well. And can we talk about the IRA?

Devorah Heitner 14:51
Tell me about the IRA, what are you seeing,

Casey O'Roarty 14:52
okay, here's where the iReal shows up is you know, and like I said, we are both at the same conference. I'm also reading rescuing our sons, Dr Duffy's book, which I'm obsessed with. And he writes about just the different voices that influence our kids. And this isn't just our boys, this is, you know, I see people in my Facebook group who are like, Oh my gosh, the makeup, the influencers, my daughters all want like this really expensive makeup. And so then we go in, and we try to have conversations about what they're seeing and what they're posting and how to have a more critical eye. And, you know, I don't know if it's just me Devorah my kids are like, Yeah, I know, I know, Mom, or that's, it's not like that, mom, I remember when my daughter was, you know, 1415. And like, seeing these, her posts and the angles and the facial expressions, and, you know, at my mid life brain is like, this feels sexual, you know, meantime, she's like, I'm just being 15. You know, and so to have these conversations in a way that can be received by our kids feels really hard. Is it just me or is it hard?

Devorah Heitner 16:06
I mean, of course, it's hard. And I think the thing about looking at our kids posts is we're seeing things that they're creating, really for their friends. And so we have to recognise that the audience was never us. And so if it feels like some creepy old guy, yeah, exactly. I mean, I get that there are people seeing it that aren't their friends. And so we have to let them know that and remind them of that. But it does feel like oh, we're seeing this stuff. And we're not, you know, we're not really supposed to see it, it was not really just like, we kind of posed and talked in a way with our friends in a way that wasn't really for our parents.

Casey O'Roarty 16:40
Oh, yeah, I lied about my age all the time. You know, when I think back, it's actually appalling. So I try not to think back too often.

Devorah Heitner 16:48
But I mean, like, going out and telling people you were older, just

Casey O'Roarty 16:51
Yes, yes. I'm so glad there were no cameras and videos being taken. I mean, I did really stupid things often. So the idea that there would be a digital trail of that is terrifying, right. And yet, it's part of the water that our kids are swimming in. It's like, they're not even terrified, because it's just normal, which is really interesting. And that dopamine hit of, especially at a time when the brain is so wired for, you know, connection and belonging, and to get those cheap hits of likes. And I mean, it's so interesting to me to go on a social media onto Instagram, and, you know, see a picture and then just the comments are just hot, hot, sexy, so pretty. So pretty. So pretty. You're so pretty. Oh my god, you know, and it's like, wow, wow, you know, how to help our kids in this context that we live in, recognise? Well, I want to say and I don't think this is the right thing to say, but I'm gonna say it it to recognise that it's not real. But it is real. It's the experience that they're having. But how do we broaden their perspective of that experience? Do you have any tips on that? Yeah.

Devorah Heitner 18:06
So broader perspective on their experience with like, How to Self present? Or, I

Casey O'Roarty 18:11
mean, just, I don't know, all of it. Yeah, I

Devorah Heitner 18:15
mean, ultimately, we need to help them understand that these apps, you know, can be kind of manipulative, and they're, they're designed with a great understanding of human behaviour and human desire, we all want to be seen, we want to be liked, we want to be admired. We want our stuff to be shared, you know, we're all a bit competitive. So if we see someone else has more followers, or more likes, we might be motivated by that. And so we just need to recognise the way these apps can kind of, you know, play with our minds a little and we want to, you know, be in charge as much as possible. We want to be running our phones and our relationships with social media and not let them run us. And so we find ourselves getting, you know, too sucked into things like likes or follower count, or things like that, it's really important to just notice, oh, the app wants me to stay here, look at something like Snapchat maps. Okay, why would it be showing me where all my friends are? Okay, that's a little manipulative, like, that's gonna keep me really hooked. But maybe I'd rather call a friend and actually spend time with them, then, you know, watch this little map, as

Casey O'Roarty 19:06
I was listening to you talk, it's like, how do we like helping them see the apps the way they see us? Like, they're real quick to show us and remind us that we are not the boss of them. Right? And helping them to also see there's this external entity that's actually pulling them in. And it's designed to manipulate them in one way or the other. So that was, that'll be an interesting talking point. What are you hearing from the kids? Because I know you talk to a lot of young people when you go and talk to kids, how are they expressing their experience of the digital world and their experience of their parents trying to manage it? I think a lot

Devorah Heitner 19:45
of kids feel like their parents are clueless sometimes like they don't really get it even though we have a lot of lived experience with social interactions. We haven't navigated these apps as adolescents. So in some ways, they're right and another way is obviously all teenagers. I've always thought their parents were cool. It's just like We thought our parents were clueless, but maybe they actually do some things. So I think it's important to kind of not feel too offended by that eye roll. A lot of that is developmental and kids needing to feel like they're large and in charge. And, you know, just today I was talking with someone about the fact that kids aren't scared of things the way adults are, and they shouldn't be right. Like if kids were as nervous to try new things, as most adults are, because we know the world more than they would never like learn to drive or fall in love for the first time or, you know, do brave things like audition for the school, play, or try to get into college. Like all the things we ask and expect adolescents to do are incredibly scary and hard. And so the fact that they're brave and try things, including some things that we might think are dicey or dangerous is actually a good thing. So we have to recognise that, you know, yes, they're primed for some risk taking, and they're going to do things differently than we would. And yes, they might think we're clueless when we warn them about, you know, the consequences, or the worst case scenario. But that doesn't mean we don't need to be here for them when things do go wrong, because inevitably, sometimes things will go wrong. And so we do need to be there for our kids. When that happens, whether it's getting into a conflict with friends over group tax, whether it's sharing a picture that they later regret, we need to be there for our kids, if those kinds of things come up. Yeah.

Casey O'Roarty 21:17
That comes up for me in classes that I do with parents is not only do we need to be there for them, but we really need to land that we are there for them. Because, you know, I mean, my parents would say that too, like, you can always talk to us, you can tell us anything. And it was like, Well, okay, thank you. And now I'm not going to come to you everything, right. And when you can really, really share that message in a way that your kids believe you, and they do come to you, you know, it's game time, it is time to respond in a way that is helpful and not hurtful and doesn't make them feel worse. Right. And, you know, with some of the things that are going on right now, I mean, it could be a life or death situation, whether or not your kid comes to you. And that's really real. That's really real for

Devorah Heitner 22:07
our kids. It can be really scary out there. It

Casey O'Roarty 22:09
can be really scary out there. So speaking of going viral, right. I was reading something today that said that, like 11% of teenagers consider themselves influencers. And, you know, I mean, I read some crazy stuff today that I won't get into, but what is you know, we're afraid they're gonna go viral for something horrible, right? We've all heard the stories of things leaking. And I mean, every once in a while in my peer group, somebody's like, Well, my kid has no ambition other than to be a YouTube star, can somebody please tell them that the likelihood of that is pretty low? What are you hearing from the parents and the kids that you work with just around the phenomenon of viral and influencing and popularity in this digital age. I

Devorah Heitner 22:56
mean, being an influencer looks like a really fun job, it looks like you just get out of bed and you're yourself. And somebody just like pays you to be you. But of course, it can be a lot more stressful than that there's a lot of pressure involved. And especially if you're an adolescent, or a young person, and your identity is going through rapid iteration and change, getting stuck in one place and feeling like oh, this is my personal brand. But what if I'm like not even into that thing anymore? Right. I think that's another issue with being an influencers. There's this expectation of, you know, sort of consistency, that doesn't really go with growth. And this got it you might want Yeah, so there's a lot of challenges. And I did interview for growing up in public a number of, you know, former or current teen and young adult influencers, and many of them had been left or wanted to leave, and they were stressed out, not everyone, and many people acknowledge that it was a mixed experience. I'm not talking about people, by the way, whose parents made them into influencers without their consent. And these were kids who, you know, say became an influencer, like in high school and chose to do it right. Like, you know, bouncing they were into and made videos and had some success with it. And that's a different scenario, obviously, then, you know, like a kid influencer from an influencer family who has really been like sort of opted into this, let's say, without any say. So that I think is dangerous and problematic situation. But if that were my high school, or were choosing to be an influencer, I would still do what one of the influencers that I interviewed for my book talked about with her parents kept reminding her like, we know you're making money and you're having success. And this is fun, but you can quit anytime, right? Like you don't have to keep doing this. You don't owe anyone anything. You don't owe your audience anything. And I think that was very reassuring for her. That said, it's still created a situation where, you know, there was some pressure, though it's not a stress free thing. And kids really, you know, think, Oh, I'm gonna go viral, and it'll be so fun. Another thing I'd like to emphasise to kids is that, you know, a friend is a mutual relationship of followers, just someone who pressed a button. Yeah,

Casey O'Roarty 24:41
there's a difference. I know. And it's enticing, like, you know, as someone who's on social media, trying to build my own platform and to get my work out there like it's hard and I'm 50

Devorah Heitner 24:53
sure would love for me to be like super viral on Tiktok or Instagram. You can come follow me. I took Jorge Nair, PhD. But like, truly, there's only so much of my life I want to give there like, I like making images and reels and stuff, but there's like, there's just a limit to how much of that any of us can do and kind of also keep an authentic actual life, right, or, you know, actually go out for like, for me, like, go out and do research and write books and articles versus like, just make Instagram reels. And I think that balance is different for everyone. But I know that at least in the book, author worlds, you know, there's a lot of credence given to people who have these really big followings. And that doesn't always work the way publishers expect. It's really interesting, like, Not everyone who has 50,000, or 100,000 followers can sell 50,000 or 100,000 books. And that's actually been really well documented. Right? That That doesn't always work that way. People think like it doesn't, you know, it's not the same. That's very interesting. Yeah,

Casey O'Roarty 25:50
that is interesting. Because it's like window shopping, you know, it's like this dressed up window. And you know, what people think what they think they're seeing what they think they're looking at is, I'm always fascinated talking to other people who are in kind of our parent education realm, and people that maybe I think, God, you must be killing it, you have so many people following you, and having them say, this is not equal dollar signs, like, let's be real converting people into, you know, paid clients is hard. Absolutely. And it's not about numbers. And so anyway, I just all of it is so interesting. And again, coming at it with 50 years of life experience and putting things into perspective, and still having that poll and that comparison, itis is real. And then, you know, we're talking about 1617 year olds, or young adults or, you know, just people with left life experience. And you know, it's all good when things go well, and it's another thing when things don't so we talked about, you know a little bit about things going viral, I know you've been on some speed dials of some schools, where things have really gone sideways, and you have a whole chapter in your book about damage control when things you know, show up as they do, and our kids feel like their life is over. When you come in and start talking to parents and communities. In that situation. What are kind of some of the talking points that you bring,

Devorah Heitner 27:15
I mean, a huge talking point is just to remember for any of us is if something goes wrong in the community, instead of being so anxious to sort of run that kid out of town on a rail, how do we focus on helping the community move forward and helping the community heal. If we only focus all this negative energy on the perpetrator, it's a way of reducing our own feeling of accountability and connection to what happened. But it also doesn't really help people move forward, we need to focus on helping the person who may be caused harm, move forward. And also make sure that school or the community is safe, or whoever was targeted, if that is the case, like if harmful stuff came out that was targeting someone, if it's just something that someone feels embarrassed by, we also need to make sure that everyone in the community helps that person move forward, and is able to let it go.

Casey O'Roarty 28:01
And then what about on the micro level? When your mom, you know, you're the mom of the well, gosh, I think either person when you're the mom or the dad of the kid that did the harm. I mean, that must be equally as devastating. Ideally,

Devorah Heitner 28:16
and not every kid has two parents and some kids have more than two, obviously. But like, sure, yeah, but ideally, there's one adult in the child's life, if there's like a disaster online, there's one adult who's kind of like, the support person who's reaching out to a therapist who's making sure the kid is safe. Like if it's really bad, you know, your child could be at risk in multiple ways. And the other adult is, you know, sort of being the kind of outward facing person, like dealing with the sort of PR crisis, if it's happening, and, you know, navigating that, and again, that's, that's if something very extreme has happened, but you sort of need, you know, sort of an inward facing person and an outward facing person. And that could be like one parent and a family friend, it could be two parents, right? It really, it's important for kids to have someone in that role. If it has to be one person, those roles are still important. So then that person is doing both of those things. But kids need both emotional support and sort of public relations. And that doesn't mean that we sort of whitewash this stuff for our kids, our kids may need to make restitution or make apologies, but in a crisis situation, you know, you just sort of need someone in those roles.

Casey O'Roarty 29:21
Yeah, well, and I was just saying on a different interview, like behaviour makes sense, even the nonsensical behaviour and so to be curious about what either role right in either kid experience whichever side our kids land on being curious and remembering and this is probably the hard thing considering the digital world kind of doesn't seem to go anywhere. Is like these are snapshot moments, right? Tapping send or you know, resharing something these are you know, I've been talking a lot about this adolescence, there are so many snapshot moments that are a part of it. entire ongoing album, which is our life and like listening to you, and thinking about those kids that, you know, make those poor decisions, and then, you know, be a life defining moment. It's heartbreaking because their brains aren't even fully developed, their risk assessment is off. No, they're not in their fully developed brain. And I guess that's why we all are so freaked out. Right? Because it can feel like such a big deal. And it can be such a big deal. It can be so hurtful. Absolutely. I mean, who wants to be a parent anymore? I'm sure Gen Z's like No, thank you. Yeah,

Devorah Heitner 30:41
definitely not because we still need but in this world,

Casey O'Roarty 30:44
I mean,

Devorah Heitner 30:47
yeah, I do wonder like, what they're thinking,

Casey O'Roarty 30:50
Do you think there's gonna be a pendulum swing? I mean, do you think that there's gonna be a generation? That's like, Okay, enough of this maybe?

Devorah Heitner 30:57
Or, you know, like, wanting like, a little more unplugged time? You mean? Or yeah, maybe or less? Yeah, other people have shared? I mean, I think, because there'll be so much out there about what everyone has shared. I think that people will be less judgmental, perhaps.

Casey O'Roarty 31:12
Yeah. Hopefully, that'd be great. That'd be great. So anything else from the kids? Like, I love talking to people who are on the boots on the ground with the kids. You know, if you were gonna pass on some wisdom that they've given you, other than the fact that we're clueless. What else is there that the kids especially? Yeah, well, but I mean, considering, like, how they might wish we were responding, you know,

Devorah Heitner 31:39
I think just really be open to hearing about their world from them. And not assuming we know, yeah, even though we do know a lot like also just being open to hearing about it from them hearing about what their experience is like, being curious, as you say, yeah,

Casey O'Roarty 31:51
yeah, I do love sitting down and having my son, we have a pretty intense real exchange on Instagram. And it's so funny, some of what he sends me is so random. And then sometimes I'm like, I do not get it. You're gonna have to explain that one to me. And it's so fun, though, because I definitely feel like it's an opening into what he finds us humorous. And, you know, he, it gives him the opportunity. I'm opening the door for eye rolling. And yeah, anyway, all right. Everyone listening, take that into consideration. Be curious, you know, learn about them from them. I love that. I love that. Thank you so much for what you bring in the world. Thank you for your writing and your research on this show. Yeah. Is there anything else you want to leave listeners with? Before we close?

Devorah Heitner 32:41
I think folks can, you know, come find me, we can put a link to in the show notes to my substack and Instagram. And then, you know, just have conversations with your kids really about their experiences online and your experiences online because it does go both ways. And they can learn from the things that are coming up for you as well. Yeah, definitely.

Casey O'Roarty 32:58
I have one final question, which is, what does joyful courage mean to you in the world of parenting in the digital age?

Devorah Heitner 33:07
Wow. I mean, joyful. Courage does mean like, you know, being open to learning new things, including having my kid maybe teach me about a new game or a new app and just not always assuming the worst when I hear about something new. Like when I hear about AI, I mean, there's that initial clench of nervousness and there are implications that concern me but also being open to like, what can I spring that's positive. Yeah,

Casey O'Roarty 33:27
you're gonna fall in love it. Thank you so much. I'm gonna put links to all of your places in the show notes. I really appreciate you Thank you. Thank you

Casey O'Roarty 33:42
thank you so much for listening in today. Thank you to my spreadable partners, as well as Chris Mann and the team at pod shaper for all the support with getting the show out there and making it sound good. Check out our offers for parents with kids of all ages and sign up for our newsletter to stay connected at B spreadable.com. Tune back in later this week for our Thursday show and I'll be back with another interview next Monday. Peace

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