Levin College of Law
Welcome to UF LAW

Stacey Steinberg

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

CV

SSRN

Phone:
(352) 273-2796

Expertise

Appellate Advocacy  • Child Abuse and Neglect  • Child Welfare  • Children's Privacy  • Children's Rights  • Digital Citizenship  • Family Law  • Legal Writing  • Sharenting  • Social Media  • 

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. She is a member of the Children’s Justice Act Task Force.

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

  • Beyond Sharenting (Work in Progress) [SSRN]
  • The Myth of Children’s Online Privacy Protection, 77 SMU Law Review 441 (2024) [Link]
  • 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 Media Interviews 

  • UNICEF – (June, 2024) What you need to know about “sharenting” [Link]
  • Law and Crime News – (March, 2024) Christian school teacher used AI and yearbook photos to make child pornography [Link]
  • 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]
  • 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]

University of Florida Levin College of Law
309 Village Drive
PO Box 117620
Gainesville, FL 32611
(352) 273-0804
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The Florida Constitutional Law Endowment in memory of Justice Ben F. Overton was created by Judge Karen Miller in 2013. This fund supports lectures and presentations by Justices of the Florida Supreme Court at the Fredric G. Levin College of Law.

HISTORY

Justice Overton, who earned his B.S. in 1951 and his Juris Doctor in 1952 from the University of Florida, was the first merit appointment to the Florida Supreme Court. Throughout his career he was active in legal education and served as an Adjunct Professor at the Levin College of Law through December 2012, the month of his death. Although he resided at Oak Hammock at the University of Florida, a continuing care retirement community developed in cooperation with UF, he also considered the Florida Supreme Court “home.” Among the high points of his later years was hosting Justices of the Florida Supreme Court in Gainesville and taking his class to Tallahassee to hear oral arguments at the Florida Supreme Court.
Judge Miller, who earned her B.S. cum laude from New York University in 1974 and her Juris Doctor from New York Law School in 1977, served as Chief Administrative Law Judge of the New York City Department of Consumer Affairs, New York City’s business regulatory agency, before she retired to Oak Hammock at the University of Florida. Having accompanied Justice Overton on his excursions to Tallahassee and joined him in welcoming guests to Oak Hammock at the University of Florida, she created the endowment in memory of Justice Overton to ensure that the Levin College of Law continues to have the funding necessary to continue and enhance the interaction between its students and the Florida Supreme Court.

 

Judge Miller remembered the event that motivated the endowment.

 

Prior to a dinner at the home of Dean Robert Jerry and Lisa Jerry shortly after Justice Overton’s death, Justice Barbara Pariente and I were discussing a suitable memorial. Justice Pariente, who had been Justice Overton’s colleague on the Florida Supreme Court and who understood the importance to him of the interaction between his students and the Court, suggested the outline of what has become the Overton lectures. Dean Jerry, who has since retired, as has Dean Emeritus Jon Mills, who assumed responsibility for implementing the Overton lectures, were very supportive from the beginning. Since Dean Mills’ retirement, Professor Timothy McClendon, who assisted both Justice Overton and Dean Mills teaching Florida Constitutional Law and who co-authored the recent Florida Constitutional Law casebook, has continued the Overton lectures with the support of Interim Dean Merritt McAlister and CGR director, Professor Danaya Wright.

Justice Overton was a devoted jurist, educator, and ethical leader of the Florida legal profession. The Overton Lecture Series brings Florida Supreme Court Justices to the University of Florida, Levin College of Law, and serves to introduce students to the inner workings of the Court. CGR and the students of the College of Law extend our deepest gratitude to Judge Karen Miller for making the Overton Lectures possible in perpetuity.

You can watch an interview for the Florida Historical Society by Mary Adkins, professor emeritus of the UF Levin College of Law, with Justice Overton here.

Justice Overton was also interviewed for the Samuel Proctor Oral History Project and a transcript of his interview is available at the Smathers Library, and here.
Justice Overton sat on the Constitution Revision Commission of 1977-78 that proposed a right to privacy in the Florida Constitution. Although it failed as part of the Constitution Revision Commission recommendations, it passed in 1980 when proposed by the legislature. The bill was co-sponsored by our very own Jon Mills. The privacy provision prevailed by greater than 60%. Justice Overton then wrote a concurrence in a critical reproductive rights case in 1989 affirming that the privacy provision of the Florida Constitution included the right to obtain an abortion. That decision was overruled in Planned Parenthood of SW and Central Florida v. Florida. You can read about the role of Justice Overton, Jon Mills – director emeritus of CGR, and the history of the 1989 case here.