Child Data Citizen: How Tech Companies Are Profiling Us from Before Birth

by Veronica Barassi

An examination of the datafication of family life--in particular, the construction of our children into data subjects.

Our families are being turned into data, as the digital traces we leave are shared, sold, and commodified. Children are datafied even before birth, with pregnancy apps and social media postings, and then tracked through babyhood with learning apps, smart home devices, and medical records. If we want to understand the emergence of the datafied citizen, Veronica Barassi argues, we should look at the first generation of datafied our children. In Child Data Citizen , she examines the construction of children into data subjects, describing how their personal information is collected, archived, sold, and aggregated into unique profiles that can follow them across a lifetime.

Genres: Politics

232 pages, Paperback

Published December 22, 2020

Reviews

[Kati · Rating 5 out of 5]

A bit too academic for me in some stretches, but overall an important read about how your online activities involving your children can impact their future and their digital identity. This will help show you what you should or should not do, but also shares the broader societal and institutional risks that are hard for any one parent to control based on the online world that exists today.

[Simona · Rating 5 out of 5]

Scary!