Friday, Mar 11, 2022 • 12min

What tech companies know about your kids

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Anthropologist Veronica Barassi urges parents to demand protections and look closely at the ways their kids’ data is being collected online. This talk was filmed at TEDxMileHigh. All TEDx events are organized independently by volunteers in the spirit of TED's mission of ideas worth spreading. To learn more about TEDxSHORTS, the TEDx program, or give feedback on this episode, please visit http://go.ted.com/tedxshorts http://go.ted.com/tedxshorts Follow TEDx on Twitter: https://twitter.com/TEDx https://twitter.com/TEDx Follow TEDx on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tedx_official https://www.instagram.com/tedx_official

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Veronica Barassi

Atossa Leoni

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Atossa Leoni

01:50

A quick new idea, daily, from the world's greatest

TEDx

Talks. I'm your host

Atossa Leoni

, and this is

TEDx

SHORTS.

02:04

Families use digital platforms every day, from online games to education

apps

and medical portals. But

anthropologist

Veronica Barassi says they may be collecting and selling your

children's

data

. With her eye-opening research, Barassi urges parents to look twice at digital terms and conditions instead of blindly accepting them, and to demand protections that ensure their

kids'

data

doesn't skew their future.

Veronica Barassi

02:40

Every day, every week, we agree to

terms and conditions

. And when we do this, we provide companies with the lawful right to do whatever they want with our

data

and with the

data

of our

children

. Which makes us wonder: how much

data

are we giving away of

children

, and what are its implications?

03:06

I'm an

anthropologist

, and I'm also the mother of two little girls. And I started to become interested in this question in 2015 when I suddenly realized that there were vast - almost unimaginable amounts of

data

traces that are being produced and collected about

children

. So I launched a research project, which is called "

Child

Data

Citizen", and I aimed at filling in the blank.

03:32

Now you may think that I'm here to blame you for posting photos of your

children

social media

, but that's not really the point. The problem is way bigger than so-called "

sharenting

." This is about systems, not individuals. You and your habits are not to blame.

03:52

For the very first time in history, we are tracking the individual

data

children

from long before they're born - sometimes from the moment of conception, and then throughout their lives.

04:05

You see, when parents decide to conceive, they go online to look for "ways to get pregnant," or they download ovulation-tracking

apps

. When they do get pregnant, they post ultrasounds of their babies on social media, they download pregnancy

apps

or they consult Dr. Google for all sorts of things, like, you know, for "miscarriage risk when flying" or "abdominal cramps in early pregnancy." I know because I've done it, and many times.

04:38

And then, when the baby is born, they track every nap, every feed, every life event on different technologies. And all of these technologies transform the baby's most intimate behavioral and health

data

into profit by sharing it with others.

04:56

So to give you an idea of how this works, in 2019, the British Medical Journal published research that showed that out of 24 mobile health

apps

, 19 shared information with third parties. And these third parties shared information with 216 other organizations. Of these 216 other fourth parties, only three belonged to the health sector. The other companies that had access to that

data

were big tech companies like Google, Facebook or Oracle, they were digital advertising companies and there was also a consumer credit reporting agency.

05:41

So you get it right: ad companies and credit agencies may already have

data

points on little babies. But mobile

apps

, web searches and social media are really just the tip of the iceberg, because

children

are being tracked by multiple technologies in their everyday lives.

05:59

They're tracked by home technologies and virtual assistants in their homes. They're tracked by educational platforms and educational technologies in their schools. They're tracked by online records and online portals at their doctor's office. They're tracked by their internet-connected toys, their online games and many, many, many, many other technologies.

06:19

So during my research, a lot of parents came up to me and they were like, "So what? Why does it matter if my

children

are being tracked? We've got nothing to hide." Well, it matters. It matters because today individuals are not only being tracked, they're also being profiled on the basis of their

data

traces. Artificial intelligence and predictive analytics are being used to harness as much

data

as possible of an individual life from different sources: family history, purchasing habits, social media comments.

06:59

And then they bring this

data

together to make

data-driven

decisions about the individual. And these technologies are used everywhere. Banks use them to decide loans. Insurance uses them to decide premiums. Recruiters and employers use them to decide whether one is a good fit for a job or not. Also the police and courts use them to determine whether one is a potential criminal or is likely to recommit a crime.

07:32

We have no knowledge or control over the ways in which those who buy, sell and process our

data

are profiling us and our

children

. But these profiles can come to impact our rights in significant ways.

07:49

To give you an example, in 2018 the "

New York Times

" published the news that the

data

that had been gathered through online college-planning services - that are actually completed by millions of high school

kids

across the US who are looking for a college program or a scholarship - had been sold to educational

data

brokers.

08:15

Now, researchers at

Fordham

who studied educational

data

brokers revealed that these companies profiled

kids

as young as two on the basis of different categories: ethnicity, religion, affluence, social awkwardness and many other random categories. And then they sell these profiles together with the name of the kid, their home address and the contact details to different companies, including trade and career institutions, student loans and student credit card companies.

08:56

To push the boundaries, the researchers at

Fordham

asked an educational

data

broker to provide them with a list of 14-to-15-year-old girls who were interested in family planning services. The

data

broker agreed to provide them the list. So imagine how intimate and how intrusive that is for our

kids

. But educational

data

brokers are really just an example. The truth is that our

children

are being profiled in ways that we cannot control but that can significantly impact their chances in life.

09:34

So we need to ask ourselves: can we trust these technologies when it comes to profiling our

children

? Can we? My answer is no. As an

Anthropologist

, I believe that artificial intelligence and predictive analytics can be great to predict the course of a disease or to fight climate change. But we need to abandon the belief that these technologies can objectively profile humans and that we can rely on them to make

data-driven

decisions about individual lives. Because they can't profile humans.

10:11

data

traces are not the mirror of who we are. Humans think one thing and say the opposite, feel one way and act differently. Algorithmic predictions or our digital practices cannot account for the unpredictability and complexity of human experience.

10:28

But on top of that, these technologies are always, always, in one way or another, biased. You see,

algorithms

are by definition sets of rules or steps that have been designed to achieve a specific result, OK? But these sets of rules or steps cannot be objective, because they've been designed by human beings within a specific cultural context and are shaped by specific cultural values. So when machines learn, they learn from biased

algorithms

, and they often learn from biased databases as well.

11:05

At the moment, we're seeing the first examples of algorithmic bias. And some of these examples are frankly terrifying. This year, the

Now Institute in New York published a report that revealed that the AI technologies that are being used for predictive policing have been trained on "dirty"

data

. This is basically

data

that had been gathered during historical periods of known racial bias and nontransparent police practices. Because these technologies are being trained with dirty

data

, they're not objective, and their outcomes are only amplifying and perpetrating police bias and error.

11:53

So I think we are faced with a fundamental problem in our society. We are starting to trust technologies when it comes to profiling human beings. We know that in profiling humans, these technologies are always going to be biased and are never really going to be accurate. So what we need now is actually political solution. We need governments to recognize that our

data

rights are our human rights.

12:27

Until this happens, we cannot hope for a more just future. I worry that my daughters are going to be exposed to all sorts of algorithmic discrimination and error. You see the difference between me and my daughters is that there's no public record out there of my childhood. There's certainly no database of all the stupid things that I've done and thought when I was a teenager.

12:53

But for my daughters this may be different. The

data

that is being collected from them today may be used to judge them in the future and can come to prevent their hopes and dreams.

13:08

I think that's it's time. It's time that we all step up. It's time that we start working together as individuals, as organizations and as institutions, and that we demand greater

data

justice for us and for our

children

before it's too late.

Atossa Leoni

13:23

The

TEDx

Talk you just listened to was recorded at a

TEDx

event in

Denver

, Colorado

. All

TEDx

events are independently organized by volunteers, who believe in

TED's

mission of ideas worth spreading.

13:41

Special thanks to the organizing team at TEDxMileHigh. Wanna listen to more

TEDx

Talks? Explore the entire archive on the

TEDx

Youtube channel. I'm

Atossa Leoni

. Thanks for listening, and see you tomorrow.

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