August 4, 2009
Generation Digital Cover Art
Kathryn C. Montgomery’s book about the issues surrounding children growing up immersed in digital media highlights the recent history surrounding the advent of the internet during the last 10 to 15 years. Among the many concerns that Montgomery reveals in her book is that of children and privacy issues. Privacy on the internet has been a serious issue since its inception, and will likely continue to be so into the foreseeable future. Two things that came as a surprise to me in reading this book were the blatant way that corporations began targeting children with advertising and data collection, and how passive the government was in letting industry go unregulated for so long.
I found it astounding to learn that there were sites created to collect data from children that were being billed as educational sites and being promoted by school districts and teacher organizations. I began using the internet in the 90s when these things were happening, but, not being a child at the time, or having children yet, I have no recollection of such sites. I find it hard to imagine it happening today when my kids go onto sites that have games for kids. I can’t remember seeing a single one that asked my kids for any information at all, and the idea of them supplying such facts as our address, or income, or such things, I find horrifying. It also highlights how little parents at the time knew what their kids were doing on the internet. Whether or not the trend has changed and parents are more aware these days is hard to say. They certainly have fewer excuses for not knowing what their kids are doing, given these days it would be hard to remain unaware that there could be harmful content on the internet these days.
Equally surprising to me as I read was that, in the face of such an obvious problem, the Clinton administration and congress suggested that industry self-regulate. To suggest to corporations that they come up with their own set of rules for how they should be allowed to collect data on the internet is like me telling my kids that they should decide how they should what chores they should have to do each day, and by what time the should be done. Of course they’re going to drag their heels. They have no incentive to make any changes. As long as things stayed the same, they would continue to benefit, and the consequences for not making changes basically just amount to a meaningless reprimand.
Happily, things have changed considerably since those days, as is evidenced by a variety of sites that my children use that do not gather data or advertise in such a predatory manner. Unfortunately, as I learned from such sites as privacy.org and privacyrights.org, the battle for an internet free of data collection and intrusive practices is not going to happen soon. Anyone with an email account knows that spam can find you despite your best efforts to filter it, and at this point, best we can do is learn to deal it.
