Children’s Tech? The importance of Privacy by Design
On the 18th of November, I was delighted to talk about my research at the Digital Action Lab at the Global Child Forum, alongside other impressive researchers and speakers to advocate the importance of protecting children’s rights. What impressed me most about the event, from the forward by HRH Princess Sofia and the concluding remarks […]
A Personal Journey to 1.5 Million Views.
One year ago in November, 2019 I walked on the stage of the Denver Bellco Theatre to participate to the TedxMileHigh event, and to talk in front of 5000 people. I was terrified. I had been working on my talk with my amazing coach Helena Bowen who over three months helped me to translate my […]
The Human Error in AI and Children’s Rights
On Saturday the 13th of June, I submitted a report titled The Human Error in AI and Children’s Rights as response to the EU White Paper on Artificial Intelligence a European Approach Consultation. My response combines the findings of the Child | Data | Citizen Project with the preliminary observations resulting from my forthcoming project […]
Child Data Citizen Book Coming Soon!
The MIT Press has just announced the release date of my book Child |Data Citizen: How Tech Companies are Profiling us from before Birth will be the 22nd of December, 2020, and I can’t wait. In Child Data Citizen, I examine the construction of children into data subjects, describing how their personal information is collected, archived, sold, […]
What Tech Companies know about our Children
I am pleased to announce that my TedxMileHigh talk is now online. In the talk I explain that tech companies are tracking children, starting before they’re born, often before they’re conceived, and throughout their lives — on Google and Facebook, through pregnancy tracking apps, in the classroom, and the doctor’s office. I show how the […]
Voice Prints and Children’s Rights
As voice-operated AIs become part of everyday living, children talk to them, they ask questions, they make jokes, they test their intelligence, or they demand to hear a specific tune. These technologies answer, interact with them and collect enormous amounts of personal and highly contextual data. Yet we have very little knowledge or understanding about […]
Social Media Data
Yesterday I wrote a post that argued that we need to move beyond a focus on what parents ‘share or not share on social media’ and instead consider children’s social media data flows. But how can we really understand social media data? The truth is that we can’t. Social media data is extraordinarily complex, as it includes not […]
Coerced Digital Participation
One afternoon in March 2017, I interviewed Alexandra. Alexandra had migrated to England, from Eastern Europe 12 years ago, and lived in a small council flat in South East London with her two children, aged 8 and 10, and her husband. In her interview she told me how difficult it was for her to adapt […]
Datafied Children: The Research
In November 2018, the UK Children’s Commissioner published a report warning that children are being datafied from birth. In the last few days we have seen a plurality of press articles talking about datafied children. But what does it really mean to talk about the datafication of children? What can we learn from the research on the topic? […]
Data Justice for Children
“I don’t understand, I feel so incompetent and frustrated. I have been reading it again and again but fail to understand it. It is clear that the company recognizes that children interact with the virtual assistants or can create their own profiles connected to the adults. Yet I can’t find an exhaustive description or explanation […]