Levin College of Law

Stacey Steinberg

Master Legal Skills Professor
Director, Gator TeamChild Juvenile Law Clinic
Director, Center on Children and Families

Phone:
(352) 273-2796

About

Stacey Steinberg is the supervising attorney for the Gator TeamChild Juvenile Law Clinic. She also serves as Director for the Center on Children and Families. Professor Steinberg’s 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. Steinberg’s work has been cited by countless news and research organizations, including NPR, the New York Times, the Washington Post, CNN, and the children’s rights arm of the United Nations, UNICEF. She has presented her children’s privacy/sharenting research to a variety of audiences, including to the American Academy of Pediatrics, the Association of American Law Schools, the University of Geneva, the Swiss Institute of Comparative Law, and events affiliated with the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. Professor Steinberg 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.

Prior to joining the law faculty, Professor Steinberg served as a felony prosecutor handling crimes involving child abuse, child pornography, domestic violence, and rape. She has served as lead counsel in hundreds of contested hearings. As a practitioner, Steinberg routinely provided training to lawyers, police officers, and social workers on matters relating to child abuse, neglect, and trial procedure. Professor Steinberg has also worked as a Senior Attorney for Children’s Legal Services.

Education

J.D., University of Florida
B.A., University of Florida

Teaching & Scholarship

Legal Writing & Appellate Advocacy
Juvenile Law

Courses

  • Child, Parent, and State
  • Gator TeamChild Juvenile Law Clinic

Publications

Books

  • 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 (Sourcebook, 2020) [Link]

Articles

  • The Myth of Children’s Online Privacy Protection, SMU Law Review (forthcoming 2024)
  • Children Seen but Not Heard?,  66 Arizona Law Review (forthcoming 2024) [SSRN]
  • Adopting Social Media in Adoption Law, 2023 Utah Law Review 447 (with Meredith Burgess and Karla Herrera) [Link]
  • Sharenting in an evolving digital world: Increasing online connection and consumer vulnerability, Journal of Consumer Affairs 56, no. 3 (2022): 1106-1126. (with L. Lin Ong, Alexa K. Fox, Laurel Aynne Cook, Claire Bessant, Pingping Gan, Mariea Grubbs Hoy, Emma Nottingham, & Beatriz Pereira) [Link]
  • The UN Committee on the Rights of the Child’s General Comment on the Digital Environment, AIoR Selected Papers of Internet Research (2022) (with Sonia Livingstone, Amanda Third, Patrick Burton, Sabine Witting, Eva Lievens, Shuli Gilutz, & David Souter [Link]
  • Changing Faces: Morphed Child Pornography and the First Amendment, 68 Emory Law Journal 909 (2019) [SSRN]
  • What Parents Should Share: Child Privacy in the Age of Social Media and the Pediatrician’s Role, Pediatrics (2018) (with Bahareh Keith) [Link]
  • Sharenting: Children’s Privacy in the Age of Social Media, 66 Emory Law Journal 839 (2017) [SSRN]
  • Parental Sharing on the Internet: Child Privacy in the Age of Social Media and the Pediatrician’s Role, JAMA Pediatrics (May 2017) (with Bahareh Keith) [Link]
  • #Advocacy: Social Media’s Power to Transform Law, 105 Kentucky Law Journal 413 (2016) [SSRN]
  • Where Did All the Social Workers Go? The Need to Prepare Families for Adoption, Assist Post-Adoptive Families in Crisis, and End Re-Homing, 67 Florida Law Review Forum 280 (2016) [SSRN]

Selected Additional Publications

  • The New York Times – (August, 2020) Why Parents Should Pause Before Oversharing Online [Link]
  • The Washington Post – (July, 2020) Four things to keep in mind before posting about your kids online [Link]
  • The London School of Economics Parenting for the Digital Future – (May, 2020) Separating parents and social media: helping families navigate online spaces even when parents live apart [Link]
  • The Washington Post – (May, 2020) An oversharing grandma’s court case offers lessons on setting boundaries for kids’ online privacy [Link]
  • The New York Times – (May, 2020) How to Keep Children’s Stress From Turning Into Trauma [Link]
  • The Washington Post – (April, 2020) This may be the time to harness the power of social media as a family [Link]
  • The Washington Post – (February, 2020) Let’s tell kids what they can do online, instead of what they can’t do [Link]
  • The Washington Post – (September, 2019) The online privacy checklist your kids need you to have [Link]
  • The Washington Post – (September, 2017) Helping Freshmen Succeed: Tips from college advisers [Link]
  • The Washington Post – (July, 2017) Parents’ social media habits are teaching children the wrong lessons [Link]
  • The Washington Post – (May, 2017) Growing Up Under the Watchful Eyes of His Mother’s Newsfeed [Link]
  • London School of Economics – (May, 2017) Sharenting: In Whose Interests? [Link]
  • The Washington Post – (March, 2016) Parent Partnerships: A Better Way to Co-Parent [Link]
  • The Washington Post – (August, 2015) Parenting in the Facebook Age [Link]
  • The Washington Post – (July, 2018) How Europe’s ‘right to be forgotten’ could protect kids’ online privacy in the U.S.[Link]
  • The Washington Post – (April, 2018) Not deleting Facebook? Here’s how you can protect your kids. [Link] co-authored with Dr. Bahareh Keith
  • The Washington Post – (March, 2018) Stephen Hawking inspired millions, including kids. How to help them cope with the loss. [Link]
  • The Washington Post – (February, 2018) Talking to kids about how the government works. [Link]
  • The Washington Post – (September, 2016) Yes, it’s hard to think about kids with cancer. But please don’t look away. (Here’s how you can help.) [Link]

Selected Media Interviews 

  • The New York Times – (October, 2023) Child Influencers Make Big Money. Who Gets It? [Link]
  • The Washington Post – (August, 2023) Parenting influencers try something new: Giving their kids privacy [Link]
  • CNN – (August, 2023) These kids get free vacations thanks to their YouTube fame. But what happens behind the scenes? [Link]
  • Florida Trend – (August, 2023) Posting About Your Kids on Social Media?
  • The New York Times – (February, 2023) When Parents Hear That Their Child is ‘Not Normal and Should Not Exist’ [Link]
  • USA Today – (October, 2021) Mom, please stop: Why sharing too much about kids on social is a bad thing [Link]
  • The Washington Post – (June, 2021) ‘The right to be forgotten’: Should teens’ social media posts disappear as they age? [Link]
  • Bloomberg – (May, 2021) The World Needs a Product Like Instagram Youth [Link]
  • The New York Times – (June, 2019) The Problem with ‘Sharenting’ [Link]
  • The Washington Post – (June, 2019) Gen Z kids are the stars of their parents’ social media — and they have opinions about that [Link]
  • The New York Times – (April, 2019) Facebook Is Stealing Your Family’s Joy [Link]
  • CNN – (March, 2019) What happens when parents abuse and exploit children for internet fame? [Link]
  • The Wall Street Journal – (March, 2019) Why I Put My Dog’s Photo on Social Media, but Not My Son’s [Link]
  • NPR – (January, 2019)  ‘Sharenting’: Can Parents Post Too Much About Their Kids Online? [Link]
  • USA Today – (March, 2018) Facebook asked users if pedophiles should be able to ask kids for ‘sexual pictures’ [Link]
  • The Daily Beast – (December, 2017) Kids Don’t have Parents Anymore – They Have ‘Sharents’ [Link]
  • Consumer Reports – (August, 2017) How to Protect Your Children’s Privacy in the Era of Online ‘Sharenting’ [Link]
  • CBS – News4Gainesville – (February, 2018) Sharenting: A parent’s right to share and a child’s right to privacy [Link]
  • NPR – (October, 2016) Do Parents Invade Children’s Privacy When They Post Online?  [Link]
  • The New York Times – (March, 2016)  Don’t Post About Me on Social Media, Children Say [Link]
  • CNN – (October, 2016) The dos and don’ts of posting about your kids online [Link]
  • The Atlantic – (October, 2016) Protecting Kids in the Age of Sharenting [Link]
  • CBS – (October, 2016) Something to consider before posting about your kids online [Link]
  • Slate – (October, 2016) Courts Aren’t the Solution to Parents Sharing on Social Media [Link]