We can teach students all we want about internet privacy and the implications of data within the context of digital citizenship, but I have come to realise there is something critical missing, and maybe there is little we can do to fix it.
Over the last couple of years I have being running sessions with students in relation to digital citizenship. During these sessions I have been covering things such as cyber security, ethics in relation to IT systems, big data, AI, etc. One of the areas which has particularly troubled me has been the response from students in relation to discussions of big data and the related implications on privacy. I had laid before students the various ways in which they, their habits and their behaviours can be tracked online and how increasing amounts of new information can be statistically inferred from this tracked data. We have discussed how this data is often leaked or shared by companies and how some companies go to great efforts to suck up all the data they can on us. One of my favourite stories to share with students continues to be that of Target, the US superstore, being able to identify a woman was pregnant from the data they had available (read the story here). In discussion the students clearly understand and are concerned in relation to how data might be used to unveil quite private and sensitive things such as pregnancy. The concerning issue however is the apathetic response I perceived from students in relation to this. “Not much we can do about it” was a common response.
In New Dark Age: Technology and the End of the Future, James Bridle outlines his concerns around the global, and particularly the US and UK, intelligence agencies ongoing surveillance efforts. He highlights how despite some very big scandals surrounding how far reaching these surveillance efforts reached, nothing much change. Despite the knowledge and understanding in relation to how we are routinely monitored and tracked by government entities nothing much has changed. For me the key point Bridle makes is that although the general public are aware of the misuse of surveillance technologies and are suitably outraged, they lack the agency to do much about it.
It struck me that maybe the issue students have, which I had mistaken as apathy, is actually a lack of agency. Stopping using social media, and the tracking it results in, isn’t something students are likely to do or something they feel they can do; Most of their friends are on social media so to not be would result in feeling excluded. To not be on social media would be miss out of the social goings on of their friends and family. Stopping using Google for their searches, again, isn’t something they can or will do as it provides convenience and ease beyond other search options. Stopping using the variety of apps around fitness, cinema, news sources, etc, again would result in a loss of services which provide benefits in specific areas of our lives.
The title of Bridles books shows his view of our march towards a potentially negative future, to a new dark age. I don’t have such a negative view of the future however I have concerns. I think my previous thoughts had been that I would be able to teach students about these concerns, the risks and the implications such that they could do something about it however on reflection I now see how they, and by extension myself and everyone else, largely lack the agency to take any significant steps against the march of big data, tracking and monitoring. It is now an almost inevitable and transparent part of life.
The goal therefore for me must be to provide the students the knowledge and understanding such that they are at least aware. With this awareness I hope they can make informed decisions where possible and, if and when agency presents itself, they might be able to bring about change. I only hope this is good enough.
Being Digitally literate 