Growing Up in Public: Coming of Age in a Digital World, featuring Devorah Heitner, Ph.D. and Heidi Stevens

7:00pm  virtual offering

Growing Up in Public: Coming of Age in a Digital World, featuring Devorah Heitner, Ph.D. and Heidi Stevens.

Zoom Registration Link: 

Family Action Network (FAN) sponsored program

This event suitable for youth 12+. It will be recorded and available on FAN’s website and YouTube channel.

With social media and constant connection, the boundaries of privacy are stretched thin. Devorah Heitner, Ph.D.’s new book Growing Up in Public: Coming of Age in a Digital World shows parents how to help tweens and teens navigate boundaries, identity, privacy, and reputation in their digital world. We can track our kids’ every move with apps, see their grades within minutes of being posted, and fixate on their digital footprint, anxious that a misstep could cause them to be “canceled” or even jeopardize their admission to college. And all of this adds pressure on kids who are coming of age immersed in social media platforms that emphasize “personal brand,” “likes,” and “gotcha” moments. How can they figure out who they really are with zero privacy and constant judgment? Heitner shows us that by focusing on character, not the threat of getting caught or exposed, we can support our kids to be authentically themselves. Drawing on her extensive work with parents and schools as well as hundreds of interviews with kids, parents, educators, clinicians, and scholars, Heitner offers strategies for parenting our kids in an always-connected world. Heitner will be in conversation with Heidi Stevens, creative director of Parent Nation, an initiative of the University of Chicago’s TMW Center for Early Learning + Public Health. Prior to joining TMW, Stevens worked at the Chicago Tribune for 23 years, where she wrote a daily column called “Balancing Act.” She maintains a weekly nationally syndicated column. Stevens also serves as a FAN board member.