Name: What tech companies know about your kids | Veronica Barassi
Uploaded: 2020-10-30T18:21:35.000Z
Duration: 11 min 2 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

Transcriber: Leslie Gauthier Reviewer: Joanna Pietrulewicz

we provide companies with the lawful right

how much data are we giving away of children,

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.

Now you may think that I'm here to blame you

for posting photos of your children on social media,

The problem is way bigger than so-called "sharenting."

we are tracking the individual data of children

You see, when parents decide to conceive,

they go online to look for "ways to get pregnant,"

or they download ovulation-tracking apps.

they post ultrasounds of their babies on social media,

or they consult Dr. Google for all sorts of things,

or "abdominal cramps in early pregnancy."

And then, when the baby is born, they track every nap,

every life event on different technologies.

transform the baby's most intimate behavioral and health data into profit

So to give you an idea of how this works,

in 2019, the British Medical Journal published research that showed

19 shared information with third parties.

And these third parties shared information with 216 other organizations.

only three belonged to the health sector.

The other companies that had access to that data were big tech companies

and there was also a consumer credit reporting agency.

ad companies and credit agencies may already have data points on little babies.

But mobile apps, web searches and social media

because children are being tracked by multiple technologies

They're tracked by home technologies and virtual assistants in their homes.

and educational technologies in their schools.

and online portals at their doctor's office.

They're tracked by their internet-connected toys,

and many, many, many, many other technologies.

a lot of parents came up to me and they were like, "So what?

Why does it matter if my children are being tracked?

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

family history, purchasing habits, social media comments.

to make data-driven decisions about the individual.

And these technologies are used everywhere.

to decide whether one is a good fit for a job or not.

to determine whether one is a potential criminal

over the ways in which those who buy, sell and process our data

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

in 2018 the "New York Times" published the news

Subtitles ListPlay Video

What tech companies know about your kids | Veronica Barassi

specific

individual

reveal

intimate