Dr Giovanna Mascheroni
Giovanna Mascheroni, PhD, is a Senior Lecturer of Sociology of Media and Communications in the Department of Sociology, Università Cattolica of Milan. She is part of the management team of EU Kids Online and co-Chair of WG4 of the COST Action DigiLitEY. From 2012 to 2014 she coordinated Net Children Go Mobile, a mix-methods, 9 country project funded by the Safer Internet Programme, which investigated the relationship between smartphones and tablet use among European children and their changing online experiences. Her work focuses on the social shaping and the social consequences of the internet, mobile media and Internet of Toys and Things for children and young people. She has authored or co-authored over 50 refereed journal articles on online risks and opportunities, civic/political participation online, datafication and its implications for digital citizenship. With Dr Donell Holloway she has edited the book The Internet of Toys Practices, Affordances and the Political Economy of Children’s Smart Play (Palgrave, 2019).
The Internet of Toys and the datafied child: beyond media panics and essentialism
Abstract: With an increasing range of internet-connected toys (IoToys) and things (wearables, virtual assistants, etc.) on the market, concerns have been raised regarding the datafication of childhood. Indeed, sensors-equipped and internet-connected objects track mundane and intimate aspects of children’s lives (such as the conversations a child has with her doll). By means of apps, wearables toys and other IoTs, children are being datafied from birth – that is, their daily activities and parameters are converted into digital data, and therefore measured, quantified, analysed, predicted and monetized. The social implications of growing up in a datafied environment are significant and potentially transformative of intimate relations (intimate surveillance or caring dataveillance – see Leaver, 2017; Lupton in press), economic relations (repositioning children as both economic actors and objects, see Holloway, in press), and citizens-state relations (by both shaping the life chances of children, and colonising the imaginaries of citizenship, see Mascheroni, 2018). The aim of this talk is threefold: first, it will review the literature on IoToys and IoTs for children and on the datafication of childhood; second, it will identify the knowledge and research gaps that still need to be addressed if we want to reach a deeper understanding of the data practices in which children and families engage; and finally, it will discuss the preliminary findings of a study on the Internet of Toys , which show the multiple meanings and practices of such technologies for children and their parents, and therefore suggest to avoid essentialist claims on the consequences of datafication for children.
Giovanna Mascheroni, PhD, is a Senior Lecturer of Sociology of Media and Communications in the Department of Sociology, Università Cattolica of Milan. She is part of the management team of EU Kids Online and co-Chair of WG4 of the COST Action DigiLitEY. From 2012 to 2014 she coordinated Net Children Go Mobile, a mix-methods, 9 country project funded by the Safer Internet Programme, which investigated the relationship between smartphones and tablet use among European children and their changing online experiences. Her work focuses on the social shaping and the social consequences of the internet, mobile media and Internet of Toys and Things for children and young people. She has authored or co-authored over 50 refereed journal articles on online risks and opportunities, civic/political participation online, datafication and its implications for digital citizenship. With Dr Donell Holloway she has edited the book The Internet of Toys Practices, Affordances and the Political Economy of Children’s Smart Play (Palgrave, 2019).
The Internet of Toys and the datafied child: beyond media panics and essentialism
Abstract: With an increasing range of internet-connected toys (IoToys) and things (wearables, virtual assistants, etc.) on the market, concerns have been raised regarding the datafication of childhood. Indeed, sensors-equipped and internet-connected objects track mundane and intimate aspects of children’s lives (such as the conversations a child has with her doll). By means of apps, wearables toys and other IoTs, children are being datafied from birth – that is, their daily activities and parameters are converted into digital data, and therefore measured, quantified, analysed, predicted and monetized. The social implications of growing up in a datafied environment are significant and potentially transformative of intimate relations (intimate surveillance or caring dataveillance – see Leaver, 2017; Lupton in press), economic relations (repositioning children as both economic actors and objects, see Holloway, in press), and citizens-state relations (by both shaping the life chances of children, and colonising the imaginaries of citizenship, see Mascheroni, 2018). The aim of this talk is threefold: first, it will review the literature on IoToys and IoTs for children and on the datafication of childhood; second, it will identify the knowledge and research gaps that still need to be addressed if we want to reach a deeper understanding of the data practices in which children and families engage; and finally, it will discuss the preliminary findings of a study on the Internet of Toys , which show the multiple meanings and practices of such technologies for children and their parents, and therefore suggest to avoid essentialist claims on the consequences of datafication for children.