aAt 7 a.m. on Wednesday, I drop my kids off for a two-night school camp. The first large-scale school training camp. Children hold pillows under their arms and drag suitcases, barely able to support the wheels or weight. they are nervous. I was excited. Some people cry. By 7:45 a.m., they were loaded. Through the tinted windows of the bus, I saw my daughter settling down next to her friend, so I waved goodbye and headed to work.

The phone rings just before 10am. Parents were asked to download an app so they could be contacted while the school was away. The app's post features 10 photos of the class crammed onto a ferry and arriving at camp. I feel a sense of relief. I was worried about the bus arriving safely, which I knew was irrational, but I felt relieved when I saw my child being beaten by his friends and smiling at the camera. I did.

The phone rings again soon. And again. And again. By the end of the day, I had received 20 posts of up to 10 photos each, which I believe was the largest.

There are 12 more posts by noon the next day.

I keep unlocking my phone because my day is interrupted by mail after mail, not only from camp but also after-school care and other children's school days. . I swipe through the carousel of photos of kids playing and scan my own photos to make sure they're safe and happy. This is an ongoing record of my childhood that took place away from my physical supervision.

Does anyone really want this?

BIt is estimated that by the time the child turns 13 72 million pieces of data About them will be collected. 80% of children in developed countries Creates a digital footprint by age 2. Much of this is being blamed on premature access to social media, the subject of a new federal plan to restrict access for teenagers. “Sharing” – Excessive sharing of photos of one’s children online.

It's not hard to picture tweens scrolling through TikTok or smug parents posting Instagram photos of their toddler sleeping next to a laser-cut wooden sign proclaiming their age.

We have a broader and more intimate culture of documenting our children. About taking pictures of our children. Receive and request data about children. It is found in cribs, nurseries and schools. It's eating up our phone's memory. And it's almost inevitable.

of Australian community attitudes towards privacy survey was released last year and spoke to around 700 parents. Half of respondents said they felt they had control over their children's data privacy. Three in five said they had no choice but to enroll their child in a particular service. Almost all said their children had the right to grow up without being profiled or targeted.

But we record from their first day. It is an act of love, narcissism, habit, and insurance against forgetting. These creatures that we create, that we nurture, that we worship – why not capture each unreproducible, beautiful, funny, gentle expression, moment, footsteps? Even when taken uncontrollably and almost unconsciously, it still feels private. A typical Saturday for my family can result in up to 32 photos being taken. Old-fashioned roll of film.

There's something else too. Since our earliest days, we have been conditioned to believe that surveillance is safe. Without data, parents cannot guarantee the health of their children. Baby monitor – promising “Complete sense of security” – Livestream a video of your baby sleeping, as well as data about oxygen levels, heart rate, and sleep behavior, to your phone in one of the rooms or half a city away.

It appeals to a parent's most basic instinct: to protect their baby.

However, as Edith Cowan University researcher Dr. Donnell Holloway writes, “Dataification” of childhood expands as children receive education. Children today are “going through a huge change.”

When a child enters daycare, an app asks for a bunch of photos to be downloaded, and some parents welcome it, while others simply accept it. These photos serve as a kind of continuing evidence of life and a demonstration of safety and good practices for early education providers. Most sites provide information about children throughout the day, with up-to-date information such as what was served for morning tea, lunch, and afternoon tea, how much they ate, when they went to bed, and which early learning curriculum touchstones they reached. I am posting a photo of. It can be a comfort and a source of joy. Once this expectation is established, the day you don't receive a photo can be worrying.

Early Education Consultant in 2019 Karen Hope writes on her industry blog:The Spoke says, “Photography in early learning centers has become, in some ways, a runaway train…a photo of a child in front of a puzzle is not necessarily evidence of learning, development, or engagement. How are you going to tell your family?” ? ”

It doesn't end with childcare alone.

“Schools play a major role in how children experience privacy on a daily basis,” the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Privacy wrote at the time. Reports published in 2021. The massive shift to online learning at the start of the pandemic sparked a technology boom in the classroom, adding that “the power disparity that existed between ed-tech companies and children, and between governments and children and parents'' Equilibrium has expanded even further.

One day during school camp, I received over 100 photos of children.

These posts evoke contradictory reflexes in me. First of all, I was relieved that she was safe. Second, leave her alone.

IIn the final section, which consists of 10 photos of the class returning by boat from the island, the daughter is not visible. For a moment, I felt uneasy. Was she left alone? Is she okay? This is an anxiety I would never have experienced otherwise. I would have worked alone. She is somewhere else, protected by people I trust. But on the contrary, I am worried. Until I found her behind photo 9. She's fine. Of course.

Expectations of information destroy healthy distance, healthy ignorance between children and parents. It may cause anxiety to parents. We are so burnt out that having to constantly evaluate and monitor our children doesn't help.

And it's an insult to a child's privacy.

Children now expect their intimate moments to be recorded. As a friend of mine pointed out, it's no longer “Mom, look at me!” it's “Mom, take a picture of me!”

They know to review their photos. My youngest daughter came home from daycare and was eager to watch her child. It was a hassle. It was a shitty photo.

Privacy is essential to children's development. Safety, absolutely. However, their privacy is being ignored and violated.

“Adult interpretations of children's privacy needs can hinder the healthy development of autonomy and independence and limit children's privacy in the name of protection,” the UN Special Rapporteur wrote. There is. “Adults' reliance on surveillance to protect children limits children's rights to privacy and autonomy.”

Privacy is critical to children's ability to develop self-esteem, self

Source: www.theguardian.com