Introduction: Problematising the treatment of children’s data

Datafication practices and processes are an increasingly important feature of 21st-century society, demanding scrutiny and attention in terms of their impact on civic life. In acknowledging and responding to the challenges posed by the control of children’s data, this special issue of Media International Australia raises the question of youngsters’ participation in data streams that influence and control their digital engagement in everyday aspects of society. Not only are children not old enough to know better when they share their data, they are generally not old enough to claim a place at the table when these issues are discussed. Parents and educators are often positioned as handy proxies for the children in their care, but they may not realise the data stream ramifications of the latest toy craze or the school-wide adoption of a classroom management system. Furthermore, some adults find it difficult to appreciate that the digital activities of 2-year-olds have financial value to global corporations. However seriously adults take their data protection responsibilities, however, they eventually cede control over children’s data as their charges mature. At a time when Australia’s digital My Health Record is becoming integrated within the national health management system, 14-year-olds can opt to control their own information: at least as far as the adults in their family are concerned. But what if a teen is being transferred to a new school because they have been identified as a suicide risk? Should the Principal in the new school be told about the challenges that this particular student is facing? Do issues of privacy trump information-sharing in the interests of the child’s wellbeing? Welcome to the Janus-faced nature of controlling children’s data and information flows.

The collection’s opening article positions the control of children’s data within the context of the economic drivers of contemporary market societies. ‘Surveillance capitalism and children’s data – the Internet of Toys and Things (IoTTs) for children’ frames this special issue within the overarching power of information as a commodity. Children’s data streams are identified as making child actors direct drivers of economic activity, as well as positioning children as the subjects of digital marketing and consumers of digital goods. Donell Holloway argues that this is the first time since children’s labour was outlawed in most industrial societies during the 19th century that children’s activities have been aligned with the creation of significant economic value. She goes on to note that Internet-connected toys and things for children significantly amplify the financial contribution made by children’s activities, and their role as data sources within the big data economy. This opening article puts front and centre the perspective that data are increasingly exploited and commodified within industrial and corporate contexts and without, in many cases, the knowledge, understanding or explicit consent of those whose activities create these data.

Different jurisdictions approach the regulation of children’s data in very different ways. Anna Bunn’s review of this complex area begins with her discussion of the newly enacted General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in the European Union (EU). This legislation offers protection for (what are termed as) ‘natural persons with regard to the processing of personal data and on the free movement of such data’. In particular, the GDPR allows people to apply for their personal information to be deleted in certain circumstances, which might even include digital links to searches relating to their personal history. This right to call for erasure of personal information, including sometimes from a searchable record, has been termed ‘the right to be forgotten’. In a world that is newly cognisant of children’s rights in digital contexts (Livingstone and Third, 2017), including in terms of young people’s past online activities, the EU has particularly positioned the right to be forgotten as being of benefit to under-18s. The GDPR speaks to the plight of those who may realise too late that youthful mistakes have created a lasting digital footprint. In this article, ‘Children and the “Right to Be Forgotten” – what the right to erasure means for European children, and why Australian children should be afforded a similar right’, Bunn argues that the European initiative offers many benefits and that ‘the right to erasure’ should be proactively offered to Australian children. The discussion overall indicates a large gap between countries with regard to what constitutes best practice in protecting children in digital contexts, and protecting children’s data in diverse circumstances.

Whereas the first two papers address children and their data from the point of view of the commodification of personal data streams, the marketing of digital services and goods, and the role of search engines, social network platforms and data aggregators, Catherine Archer’s work brings the exploitation of children’s data closer to home. ‘How influencer “mumpreneur” bloggers and “everyday” mums curate their children’s online presence’ contrasts the different approaches of influencer mum bloggers and their everyday-mother followers in terms of the presentation of their children online. Acknowledging the impact of so-called influencer mum bloggers upon other mothers, Archer notes that semi/professional mum bloggers are particularly likely to include pictures and information about their children. This may normalise the practice, making it more likely that everyday mothers will do this too. Some of Archer’s informants, since she interviewed both blogger mothers and their everyday followers, also talk about the pressures they feel from distant friends and family members to share images and information about their children’s daily lives.

It is only comparatively recently that this sharing of very young children’s data has been recognised as raising a wide range of privacy and data control issues for children (Abidin, 2015; Leaver, 2017). Indeed, one of the implications of research with parents and older children, such as that reported by Merike Lipu and Andra Siibak in ‘“Take it down!” Estonian parents’ and pre-teens’ opinions and experiences with sharenting’, is that social media posts can cause significant conflict between children and their parents. Even when children are old enough to have negative opinions about what their parents wish to say about them, and even when children express their opinions, some parents chose to do what they wish instead of what their child wants. This article reports upon work with 14 Estonian mothers, each linked with a preadolescent child aged between 9 and 13, to explore the complexity around this family-based negotiation. The authors report that these issues raise ‘privacy boundary turbulence’. Children and their parents often differ in their opinions about children’s rights with regard to parents’ posting practices. Furthermore, children believe that etiquette suggests that parents should seek permission before posting information about their child. Finally, children feel frustrated and may be distressed when their parents disregard children’s comments and feedback around parental representations of children’s lives online.

Whereas older children may understand what parents are doing with personal information about their children’s lives, and have opinions about this, they may be less aware of the datafication practices of corporations, universities (and university researchers) and governments. Teresa Swist and her co-authors Philippa Collin and Amanda Third address this issue in their article ‘Co-curating children’s data journeys beyond the “supply chain”’. They argue that the datafication of children is one of the ways in which children’s agency is restricted and controlled. Instead of capturing the ‘messy’ individuality of children’s lives, data streams typically erase this, imposing regularity and consistency in line with the information sought and recorded. These co-authors adopt a children’s rights framework to make visible the ways in which children’s data circulate (and fail to circulate) through three case studies that explore corporate, governmental and university data flows. The aim is not necessarily to make such flows more efficient, but instead to problematise the ways in which data are accumulated and circulated by foregrounding the perspective of children’s agency, recognising that much information is lost when something as complex and nuanced as children’s lived experience is datafied. This article suggests that engaging with children as co-curators of their data engenders a more respectful relationship with both children and data while also embracing difference and enabling children’s self-direction, preparing them for greater participation in digital society.

Following on from a consideration of children’s data in corporate, governmental and university contexts, ‘Privacy and app use in Australian primary schools: insights into school-based internet governance’ shines the spotlight onto the practices of educational institutions with regard to the management of children’s data. This article by Ellie Rennie, Sarah Howard, Julian Thomas, Jun Ma, Jack Yang and Kathrin Schmieder reports upon one aspect of a larger project involving primary schools and digital technologies. Although the education sector is a significant market player in terms of information collection and processing, there is little evidence that educators have a consistent approach to these issues. Some decision makers in the 148 Australian primary schools constituting this case study do not appear to adopt a principle-based attitude to children’s educational use of digital apps, programmes and platforms based upon the app developer’s stated treatment of children’s identifiable data. Privacy laws also encourage use of ‘education suite’ platform apps, supported by corporstions such as Microsoft and Google, that forgo use of children’s data in return for future customers; or alternatively promote paid subscription apps that only some schools can afford. Children’s privacy laws therefore have direct consequences for the political economy of the Internet as well as impacting upon digital inclusion.

Given that there does not appear to be a methodical consideration of the protection of children’s privacy as part of decision making around which apps to use, these issues are also unlikely to be receiving significant attention in class-based discussions with children. A lack of acknowledgement around what happens to children’s data flows in educational contexts has follow-on implications for the formation and education of children as digital decision makers in their own right.

The final article in this special collection is Lucas Walsh’s ‘Whose risk and wellbeing? Three perspectives of online privacy in relation to children and young people’s wellbeing’. The article tells the story of the school mentioned previously that was unaware that a new student was a suicide risk. Shortly after inducting the student, the school found itself dealing with an attempted suicide. Walsh’s discussion raises the issue as to whether privacy or information-sharing is in children’s best interests, and where these factors could or should come into play. Using three perspectives to illuminate the discussion – policy makers, schools and children themselves – the article goes on to consider the implications of these debates in terms of contemporary work on datafication and dataveillance (Lupton and Williamson, 2017). In detecting a shift in the policy discourse from matters of risk to questions of resilience, Walsh hopes for a more positive discussion around these issues. Even so, the question of what should take precedence when privacy trumps wellbeing, especially given that effective privacy can be an investment in future wellbeing, remains one that has not been fully resolved.

This special issue arises from our engagement in an Australian Research Council Discovery Grant DP180103922, ‘The internet of toys: benefits and risks of connected toys for children’, led by Donell Holloway (2018–2020). That research acknowledges that Internet-connected goods and devices for children can implicate four income streams: the toy itself, the service that connects the toy with cloud computing or other related data storage, the commodification of children’s data arising from their activities with the Internet-connected toy and the potential for product placement and marketing communication by the toy to the child and their family (Holloway and Green, 2016). These issues, however, are part of a larger discussion about children’s rights to participation, provision and protection in digital contexts, including those that are framed by domestic life. That discussion is gaining momentum. In November 2018, for example, as this issue went to press, the Children’s Commissioner for England released the report ‘Who knows what about me?’ (Children’s Commissioner, 2018) in an attempt to include children and young people in the debate. It is no coincidence that these questions have become increasingly pressing. The 1989 UN Declaration on the Rights of the Child was promulgated at the same time as Sir Tim Berners-Lee’s concurrent, but unrelated, invention of the World Wide Web. These milestones have had increasing ramifications for children, for human rights and for the exponential rise in the power of data. On the 30th anniversary of these events, this Media International Australia special issue serves as a springboard for the next stage of the evolving debate.