Stacey Steinberg

Director | Professor University of Florida

  • Gainesville FL

Stacey Steinberg's research explores the intersection of a parent's right to share online and a child's interest in privacy.

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Biography

Stacey Steinberg is. the director of the Center on Children and Families in the Levin College of Law. She also is the supervising attorney for the Gator TeamChild Juvenile Law Clinic and is a master legal skills professor. Her research explores the intersection of a parent's right to share online and a child's interest in privacy. She is an internationally sought after expert on children's privacy and sharenting and is the author of "Growing Up Shared: How Parents Can Share Smarter on Social Media and What You can Do to Keep Your Family Safe in a No-Privacy World." Before joining the law faculty, Stacey served as a felony prosecutor handling crimes involving child abuse, child pornography, domestic violence and rape. As a practitioner, Stacey provided training to lawyers, police officers and social workers on matters relating to child abuse, neglect and trial procedure. She also worked as a senior attorney for Children's Legal Services.

Areas of Expertise

Family Law
Child Welfare
Online Safety
Sharenting
Children's Privacy
Children's Rights
Social Media
Child Abuse and Neglect
Digital Citizenship

Media Appearances

Is it Ethical to Share Photos of Kids on Social Media?

Katie Couric Media  online

2022-02-05

For a while now, as social media has played a bigger and bigger role in our lives, I’ve been wondering about those ubiquitous photos of children posted on social media. I’ll never forget when Ellie was 16 and I had just done an interview for Good Housekeeping. I mentioned something about her in the article and she politely approached me afterwards, saying, “Please do me a favor: Will you ask me permission before talking about me in a publication?” I thought she was perfectly justified in her request.

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Mom, please stop: Why sharing too much about kids on social is a bad thing

USA Today  print

2021-10-17

I love talking about my stunning, brilliant, cherished-beyond-measure, 20-year-old daughter. Oh sure, there are moments I overdo it a little, and maybe even gush, embellish, or overshare.

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Parents Need Help Balancing Kids' Safety and Privacy Online

Barron's  print

2021-08-20

I am a parent and at first glance the child-safety protections Apple just announced looked like a welcome. tool to help me keep my kids safe online. I am also a current attorney in dependency court and a former child abuse prosecutor, so I recognize how valuable such tools can be in preventing pedophiles from hurting children.

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Articles

Documented: My Week at the South Texas Family Residential Center

University of Florida Journal of Law & Public Policy

Stacey Steinberg

2018-09-01

I’ve been a practicing attorney for fifteen years. I’ve been a law professor for nine years. In that time, I’ve tried countless cases of domestic violence. I’ve counseled rape victims and interviewed child abuse victims. I’ve meet with parents who have buried their children, and I’ve sat with families as they await news of their loved ones fate. I’ve terminated parental rights, and I’ve built new families through adoption. I’ve taught cross cultural counseling, and I’ve prepared my law students to make legal arguments in emotionally charged cases. But until last month, I was able to move on from my cases. I was able to separate the lessons I taught from the life I live. I’ve always been able to separate my work in the court and classroom from my life at home.

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Changing Faces: Morphed Child Pornography Images and the First Amendment

Emory Law Journal

Stacey Steinberg

2018-08-27

Technology has changed the face of child pornography. The Supreme Court has held that child pornography harms a child both in the creation of the image and the circulation of the image, and thus has ruled that the possession and distribution of child pornography falls outside the realm of First Amendment protections. However, today’s images depicting child pornography do not always depict an actual child engaged in a pornographic act. Instead, some images depicting child pornography are “morphed images.”

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Sharenting: Children's Privacy in the Age of Social Media

Emory Law Journal

Stacey Steinberg

2016-03-08

Through sharenting, or online sharing about parenting, parents now shape their children’s digital identity long before these young people open their first email. The disclosures parents make online are sure to follow their children into adulthood. Indeed, social media and blogging have dramatically changed the landscape facing today’s children as they come of age. Children have an interest in privacy. Yet a parent’s right to control the upbringing of his or her children and a parent’s right to free speech may trump this interest.

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Spotlight

3 min

Sharing photos of your kids online? Here's what you should consider.

By Emma Richards Today’s parents are the first to raise children alongside social media and in this era of likes, comments and shares, they must also decide when to post images of their children online and when to hold off to protect their privacy. The practice of “sharenting” – parents posting images of their children on social media platforms — has drawn attention to the intersection between the rights of parents and the rights of their children in the online world. Stacey Steinberg, a professor in UF’s Levin College of Law, author and mother of three, says parents need to weigh the right to post their child’s milestones and accomplishments online against the right of a child to dictate their own digital footprint and maintain their privacy. Steinberg, like many parents, avidly posted photographs of her children online to document their childhoods. When she left her job as a child welfare attorney to become a professor, Steinberg also began writing about her motherhood experiences. She also began rethinking posting about her children online, realizing that it could be doing more harm than good. And yet, there was little guidance for parents on to consider when posting images and how to do so with their children’s safety in mind. Among the problematic issues: Machine learning and artificial intelligence allow for the collection of information about people from online posts but there is little control over or understanding of how that stored information is being used or how it will future impact on the next generation. According to Steinberg, a Barclays study found that by the year 2030, nearly two-thirds of all identity theft cases will be related to sharenting. There are also concerns pedophiles may collect and save photographs of children shared online. For example, one article she reviewed reported that 50% of pedophile image-sharing sites had originated on family blogs and on social media. Steinberg says parents should model appropriate social media behavior for their children, such as asking permission before taking and posting an image and staying present in the moment rather than living life through a lens or being fixated with what’s online. “I think it’s a danger that we’re not staying in the moment, that we’re escaping to our newsfeed or that we’re constantly posting and seeing who’s liked our images and liked what we’ve said instead of focusing on real connections with the people in front of us,” Steinberg said in an episode of the From Florida Podcast. While parents serve as the primary gatekeepers for children’s access to the online world, tech companies and policymakers also have roles to play in setting parameters and adopting law that protect children’s safety. Numerous European countries have already moved in this direction with such concepts as the “right to be forgotten,” which allows people to get information that is no longer relevant or is inaccurate removed to protect their name or reputation on platforms such as Google. “The United States really would have a hard time creating a right to be forgotten because we have really strong free speech protections and we really value parental autonomy Steinberg said. Google has, however, created a form that allows older kids to request that old photographs and content about them be removed from the internet, which Steinberg says is a promising step. Steinberg would love to see other mechanisms adopted to minimize the amount of data that is collected about children and ensure artificial intelligence is used responsibly and ethically when collecting online data. In the meantime, parents can proactively make online privacy issues a topic of discussion with their children and take proactive steps to limit their digital footprints, such as deleting old childhood photos. “One thing that I really want to encourage families to do is not to fear the technology, but to try to learn about it,” Steinberg said.

Stacey Steinberg