Skip to main content
Stacey Steinberg headshot

Stacey Steinberg

steinberg@law.ufl.edu

(352) 273-2796

CV

SSRN

Stacey Steinberg

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

Stacey Steinberg is the supervising attorney for the Gator TeamChild Juvenile Law Clinic and Director of the Program on Children and Families. Her scholarship examines how children’s privacy and welfare are shaped by both parents and the platforms that profit from family sharing online — from her foundational work on “sharenting” to her current research on holding social media companies accountable for the harms their design choices foreseeably cause children.

Steinberg is an internationally recognized voice on children’s digital rights, working alongside researchers and policymakers across the U.S., U.K., Europe, and beyond, including collaborations tied to the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child’s General Comment on the Digital Environment. Her work has been cited by news and research organizations including NPR, the New York Times, the Washington Post, CNN, and UNICEF, and published in venues spanning law, pediatrics, and communication studies — including JAMA Pediatrics, Pediatrics, Pediatrics Open Science, and the Journal of Consumer Affairs, alongside leading law reviews. She has presented her research to audiences including 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.

Prior to joining the law faculty, Professor Steinberg served as a felony prosecutor handling crimes involving child abuse, child sexual abuse material (CSAM), 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


Expertise

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


Courses

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

Teaching & Scholarship

Legal Writing & Appellate Advocacy
Juvenile Law


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]
    • Book Review of Growing Up Shared (October 2025) [Link]

Articles and Book Chapters

  • Dogs as a Tool in Trauma Responsive Lawyering, 2026 University of Illinois Law Review (forthcoming)
  • Steinberg, S., Rosenthal, C. Child Exploitation Through Online Sharing: “Sharenting” and the Role of the Pediatric Provider. Pediatrics Open Science, June 2026; 2(2): 1–3. [Link]
  • Beyond Sharenting, 99 Southern California Law Review 559 (2026). [SSRN]
  • Livingstone, S., Lievens, E., Graham, R., Pothong, K., Steinberg, S., Stoilova, M. (2025). Children’s Privacy in the Digital Age: US and UK Experiences and Policy Responses, in Handbook of Children and Screens (Christakis, D.A., Hale, L., eds.), Springer, Cham (2025) [Link]
  • The Myth of Children’s Online Privacy Protection, 77 SMU Law Review 441 (2024) [Link]
  • Children Seen but Not Heard?,  66 Arizona Law Review 147 (2024) [SSRN]
  • Adopting Social Media in Adoption Law, 2023 Utah Law Review 447 (with Meredith Burgess and Karla Herrera) [Link]
  • The Art of Sharing: Children’s Rights in the Influencer Era, 3 Fla. Ent. & Sports L. Rev. 17 (2023) [Link]
  • Bessant, C., Ong, L.L., Cook, L.A., Grubbs Hoy, M., Pereira, B., Fox, A., Nottingham, E., Steinberg, S., Gan, P. (2023). Exploring Parents’ Knowledge of Dark Design and Its Impact on Children’s Digital Well-Being. AoIR Selected Papers of Internet Research. [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]
  • Documented: My Week at the South Texas Family Residential Center, 30 U. Fla. J.L. & Pub. Pol’y 99 (2019) [SSRN]
  • 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 (December, 2025) Handling the holidays [Link]
  • Security.org (October, 2025) Parents’ Social Media Habits [Link]
  • RARE Revolution Magazine (Autumn 2025) Growing up shared [Link]
  • USA Today (June, 2025) Ms. Shirley, 4, is a TikTok sensation. Some fans are worried, and her mom is speaking out. [Link]
  • TIME (May, 2025) How to Teach Kids the Importance of Digital Privacy [Link]
  • UF News (April, 2025) Law students at UF advocate for Florida children in foster care [Link]
  • 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]
  • UF Explore (December, 2023) Snap Decisions Posting about your kids on social media? Here’s how to protect their privacy [Link]
    • UF News Feature [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]
  • 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]
  • Bloomberg – (May, 2021) Facebook Won’t Apologize for Instagram Youth [Link]
  • NPR – (August, 2019) What Parents May Not Realize When They Post About Their Kids Online [Link]
  • BBC – (August, 2019) The Apps Combating Sharenting
  • 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]
  • Here & Now (NPR/WBUR) – (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]
  • CBS – News4Gainesville – (February, 2018) Sharenting: A parent’s right to share and a child’s right to privacy [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]
  • 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]