Leah Plunkett

Leah is a leading expert on digital law and digital life in our K-12 schools, our homes, and our civic organizations that serve kids and teens. She is an associate dean & professor at University of New Hampshire Franklin Pierce School of Law, a faculty associate at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University, and author of SHARENTHOOD: Why We Should Think Before We Talk About Our Kids Online (MIT Press). WIRED named SHARENTHOOD a “Must-Read” book because it “illuminates children’s digital footprints” and guides teachers, parents, and other trusted adults on how and why to better protect children’s digital privacy. Leah brings compassion, clarity, sound legal judgment, and a sense of humor to unpacking the many cutting-edge, complex questions about youth and the digital world that educators, parents, and other decision-makers are confronting—including protecting digital privacy, the role of kids as influencers or members of influencer families, and how to fight fake news and promote digital literacy. She is an honors graduate of Harvard Law School and Harvard College, where she performed improvisational comedy with IGP.

Leah lives in Concord, NH, with her husband, two young kids, and dog. She is an everyday runner and around-the-clock Earl Grey tea drinker.

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Unlike accounts either demonizing or defending social media, Plunkett charts an original course in asking adults, and urging law, to embrace youth as a time for experimentation. This book offers tools to empower youth and a nuanced, cogent assessment of the challenges in protecting privacy in the digital age.

– Rachel Rebouché - Associate Dean for Research, Professor of Law / Temple University Beasley School of Law.

Plunkett, a lawyer with experience defending young clients, provides a much-needed perspective on the rise of 'sharenting,' which she defines as the sharing of a child's private information through digital platforms. With an eye for history, a critique of the US legal system, and a penchant for storytelling, in this book she offers parents, caregivers, educators, and citizens important insights on how best to navigate the digital terrain.

– Lynn Schofield Clark - Author of The Parent App: Understanding Families in a Digital Age

A fascinating and frightening addition to the literature on the technological reconstruction of childhood and parenting. Plunkett details how taken-for-granted adult data-sharing behaviors, legally sanctioned and cynically encouraged by tech companies, constrain what our children are and can become. She sounds a loud warning—and proposes a significant cultural reorientation. We would be wise to listen!

– Joshua Meyrowitz - Professor Emeritus of Media Studies / University of New Hampshire; author of No Sense of Place: The Impact of Electronic Media on Social Behavior

In Sharenthood, Leah Plunkett deftly explores the challenges inherent in raising children in the digital age, from the unique perspective of a legal scholar. Rather than fear-mongering about what anonymous bad guys might do to our children, she notes what we, ourselves, as parents already are doing every day—often for no reward greater than 'likes.' The book is a bracing and provocative look at the present and a prescient warning about our potential futures.

– Dorothy Fortenberry - Writer/producer, The Handmaid's Tale on Hulu

Plunkett is describing a set of questions, about data and privacy, that many of us already grapple with. Yet it all seems particularly nefarious in the context of children, for whom a defining condition of life is that they are captive to forces they cannot possibly grasp.... [Sharenthood's] most gripping moments come when she imagines scenarios that seem both far-fetched and, when you think more deeply about the direction of technological innovation, a bit inevitable.

– Hua Hsu - The New Yorker

Illuminating and common sense.... Reveals the alarming ways your family's data can be used and distributed, and advocates for a more thoughtful approach to how we parent your digital-era offspring.

– Mary Elizabeth Williams - Salon

One of 13 Must-Read Books for Fall Leah Plunkett illuminates children's digital footprints: the digital baby monitors, the daycare livestreams, the nurse's office health records, the bus and cafeteria passes recording their travel and consumption patterns―all part of an indelible dossier for anyone who knows how to look for it. Plunkett thinks the offspring surveillance ought to stop and has suggestions for how to kick the sharenting habit. They are worth considering.

– Emma Grey Ellis - Wired

A fascinating and frightening addition to the literature on the technological reconstruction of childhood and parenting. Plunkett details how taken-for-granted adult data-sharing behaviors, legally sanctioned and cynically encouraged by tech companies, constrain what our children are and can become. She sounds a loud warning―and proposes a significant cultural reorientation. We would be wise to listen!

– Joshua Meyrowitz - Professor Emeritus of Media Studies / University of New Hampshire; author of No Sense of Place: The Impact of Electronic Media on Social Behavior

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