Law Commons^™

Children Seen But Not Heard, Stacey B. Steinberg

UF Law Faculty Publications

Children are expected to abide by the will of their parents. In the last 200 years, American jurisprudence has given parents the ability to control their children’s upbringing with few exceptions. The principle governing this norm is that parents know best and will use their better knowledge to protect their children’s welfare.

The COVID-19 pandemic, public school rules, and children’s privacy laws offer modern examples of regulations in which the interests of parents and children may not align. Minors may want access to vaccines, despite a parent’s refusal to sign a consent form. Minors may want to talk to their …

Adopting Social Media In Family And Adoption Law, Stacey B. Steinberg, Meredith Burgess, Karla Herrera

UF Law Faculty Publications

Social media has dramatically changed the landscape facing families brought together through adoption. Just as adoptive families thirty years ago could not have predicted the impact of DNA technology on post-adoption family life, adoptive families are only now beginning to grasp the impact of social media connectivity on the lives of their growing children. This change is both related to social media’s impact on family life and fundamental shifts in our understandings about privacy more generally. Understanding the legal rights of parents and children in these circumstances is both a novel and underexplored issue for family law, constitutional law, and …

Sharenting: Children's Privacy In The Age Of Social Media, Stacey B. Steinberg

UF Law Faculty Publications

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. When parents share information about their children online, they do so without their children’s consent. These …