In the lively debate about privacy and data protection in the digital age, the voices and experiences of children are largely absent, as is attention to their specific needs, rights and opportunities beyond, arguably, a panicky risk discourse that presumptively speaks for yet rarely hears from children. This is problematic because children constitute a significant segment of the online population, often pioneering in their adoption of new services and experimental in their digital practices, not easily incorporated into discussions of ‘the population’ or ‘the public’ or ‘users’ as a generality. Also, as with the canary in the coal mine, provision for and abuses of children’s privacy online have turned out to be indicative of problems now affecting the wider population: it is not only children who do not read or understand terms and conditions, not only children prepared to trade their personal data for free services, not only children who struggle to exercise their right to protect or retrieve or delete their data. In this presentation, I consider what we know of children’s privacy and data literacy, and argue that a governance regime that treats children fairly will be one that works for everyone.
The hashtag to use for tweeting about this event is #oiicolloquia.
Professor of Social Psychology, Department of Media and Communications, London School of Economics and Political Science
