Datafication of Children

Datafication, or being datafied, is the new trend that is happening more and more when our actions online are changed to quantifiable data. This data can be monitored, analyzed, and tracked. Companies place value on this changing data because it can be leveraged for lucrative practices like targeted advertisements.

Many individuals in our generation began making their social media footprint once they turned 13 years old, the age required in order to make an account. Teenagers would pick their own photos and videos they wanted to display of themselves in order to portray their own image. This is evolving. As these teenagers are growing up to adulthood and having babies themselves, their social media use is not changing.

Children’s interactions with the internet is increasing. Toddlers are using toys that connect and upload data to the internet, like CloudPets, which stored voice memos and was eventually hacked. Parents are creating social media profiles for their unborn fetuses and continue to post about their child well into their young child years. Parents are oftentimes violating their child’s privacy, especially depending on how personal the shared content is.

Kids' Online

Technology is making its way into every aspect of our lives, and this is also applicable to children. There are many ways that children consent to having their data gathered. Electronic kid’s toys like Teksta Toucan, My Friend Cayla, or CloudPets were popular among children, but all of these electronic toys are Wi-Fi and Bluetooth enabled. Teksta Toucan and My Friend Cayla had reports of their Bluetooth feature being hacked and displaying cuss words to their young users. CloudPets’ stuffed toy’s collected data on children’s voice recordings and photos which was then hacked and compromised.

Student data being sold on the Dark Web.

Educational Softwares are being used in classrooms across the world. Sites like Edmodo, Schoolzilla, and learning management systems at schools and universities are created in order to supplement the learning process. These softwares require kids to create accounts and post personal data online. This data can, and has repeatedly, been hacked .

Wearable Technologies like GPS-enabled smartwatches were also subjects of mass hackings. These watches, meant for parents to be able to track their children’s whereabouts, had no encryption, kept a default password, and were technologically vulnerable. This allowed for people to easily hack into the watch’s microphone and GPS service.

Sharenting

There is another popular wave of “sharenting”, or parents sharing information about their children online (CITE).

Responses

There have been laws created in order to protect children and their rights when it comes to data and their online identity. Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) <ref"Children's Online Privacy Protection Rule ("COPPA")", Federal Trade Commission. Retrieved on 25 March 2020.</ref>

was created in 1998 requiring websites to include a privacy policy and instructions on when a child under 13 years of age must obtain consent from a parent, as well as responsibilities the website has in order to protect the child’s online privacy and safety. This law was intended to protect children under 13 from the oftentimes negative nature of the internet.

Although COPPA exists in order to protect young children from the effects of the Internet, the children are still being posted online through parents’ pages. By the time kids are 13 years old, parents will have posted 1300 photos and videos of their child to social media. This number reaches about 70,000 posts by the time they are 18 years old due to the child’s own posts (Children’s Commissioner). GDPA General Data Protection Regulation <ref"General Data Protection RegulationGDPR", Intersoft Consulting. Retrieved on 25 March 2020.</ref> in Europe says “processed lawfully, fairly and in a transparent manner in relation to individuals”. But does not rule out datafication of children, it just says it should not be the norm.

Ethical Concerns

Digital Kidnapping Profiling College These children will be profiled more just because there is more information on them online. It is argued that the effects that this datafication has on childhood well-being is still unknown and thus should be proceeded with caution. Some have argued that it can damage a child’s future well-being and have other negative implications.

References

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