End Child Surveillance Surveillance
Technology companies are preying on our children for profit and putting them in danger. Apps and devices are becoming more and more invasive, harvesting our children’s sensitive private information and using it to spy, manipulate, and discriminate.
We need to protect our kids.
Join the movement against child surveillance
How is surveillance harming kids?
Addictive apps
Platforms like YouTube and TikTok use addictive features like YouTube autoplay and Snapchat streaks to keep our kids watching and push them toward more and more content—even harmful content—in order to maximize profits.
Voyeuristic advertising
Companies like Facebook and Google build a profile based on young users’ private information, vulnerabilities, and curiosities. They use this spying to create “micro-targeted” ads that undermine their self confidence and harm kids.
Educational stalkerware
The same tools that allow stalkers to spy on victims have become part of pandemic learning. The invasive and easily hacked products being trained on school kids include e-proctoring, facial recognition in the classroom, emotional surveillance, attention tracking, and more.
Chronic surveillance
Cameras are everywhere in kids’ lives—home, school, and activities. It is impossible to tell who is watching, and for what reasons. Even family-marketed products like Amazon Ring and Fitbit track kids’ daily walks to school, creating vulnerable databases of kid’s routines & physical characteristics.
Ban addictive apps
Turn off addictive autoplay and recommendations on kids’ YouTube content
Youtube hosts millions of hours of kids content on their adult property, where even content aimed at toddlers and preschool children will autoplay for hours. This makes kids screen addicted and can send children and teens down dangerous content rabbit holes towards extremist, violent, and inappropriate content.
Sign PetitionA wasteland of vapid content. ”
Read ArticleFrom a Parent
When my daughter was 7, the alarming thing was when I started to see some of those [addictive] patterns showing up in apps that were targeted to kids.
Ban voyeuristic advertising
Stop selling kids’ data to 3rd party advertisers through apps
The Google Play store supports thousands of apps that sell little kids’ data to advertisers. A recent study from the AMA shows 67% of apps targeted to kids under 5 in the store transmitted information to 3rd party advertisers—including from misleadingly labeled “teacher-approved” apps.
Sign PetitionIf you’re under 13, your data is not supposed to be shared with advertisers, but that’s happening routinely, and at scale. ”
Read ArticleFrom a Parent
But then she asks us for real money so she can buy those outfits. Normally we say no, and when she gets off the phone, she becomes very crabby.
End educational stalkerware
Stop Racist Proctoring in Schools!
Schools across the country are using discriminatory online proctoring software that watches students on their computers while they take tests. My daughter Amaya could not easily sit down to take a biology quiz like her White classmates because proctoring software would not “recognize” her as a person.
Sign PetitionLockport Schools’ facial recognition tech has mistaken broom handles for guns and has misidentified Black students at much higher rates. ”
Read ArticleLearn More
Tech Companies Want Schools to Use COVID Relief Money on Surveillance Tools
From a Parent
It had to detect her face, and it took, according to her, 30 trials before it could detect her face, even though it was noon and she had her windows open and two overhead lights turned on.
Stop chronic surveillance
Ban biometric data and analysis from digital services used by kids
Big tech companies are collecting, storing, and analyzing kids’ biometric data— maps of their bodies that include things like face scans, fingerprints, eye scans, and patterns of how they speak, move, and type—at massive scale. This invasive data collection sets children up for a lifetime of surveillance, identity theft, and potential discrimination.
Sign PetitionTikTok sued for billions over use of children’s data ”
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Students attending high-surveillance high schools are less likely to attend college.
From a Parent
Their experience alone with that type of policing and that type of mindset, it [impacts] their self-esteem…It makes them feel like they are criminals.
misidentified by facial recognition
14 year old girl kicked out of Michigan roller rink alone after being misidentified by facial recognition scanner.
From NAACP
Why schools need to abandon facial recognition, not double down on it.