IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - March 2023 - 76

Feature
research around young people's perspectives around
commercial contexts, which is rapidly important in
the increasing commercially digital environment [7].
Understanding children and young people's
privacy concerns regarding commercial digital
products (be online platforms or personal digital
gadgets), and what they want to be done about them,
is an important task. Children and young people are
unique users of the digital world, and there are at
least three reasons young people's privacy concerns
may be distinct from adults. First, the ways that
young people are datafied and the nature of their
data footprint is distinct from adults. Today's young
people are the first to be datafied-to have their lives
turned into extracted data points-from even before
birth [8]. They carry a whole lifetime's worth of data
(and privacy concerns), shared with a fluid mix of
state and commercial companies that young people
may be unaware of. Many of these data holders may
not be committed to young people's best interests,
which leads to our second distinction: this data can
be used by young people in ways to shape their lives
and life chances in ways that current adults have not
experienced [9]. For example, when the high school
leaving exams were canceled because of COVID
in the United Kingdom, young people's postcode
data-a marker of socioeconomic status-was used
to downgrade university entrance scores of young
people from lower income neighborhoods [10]. This
was reversed after a public backlash in this instance,
but the algorithmic governance of future generations
from before birth remains possible if not inevitable.
Lastly, the scale and pervasiveness of this datafication
have gone hand in hand with the normalization
of surveillance and datafication [11]. Young people
have grown up in a different age of " dataism, " or a
new social conviction that data flows with corporations
is normal [11]. Given this, young people may
have different perspectives about privacy and data
security that are worthy of consideration.
If technologists and policymakers aim to develop
solutions that serve all members of the community,
understanding how children and young people
think about privacy, and what they think should
happen with their personal data, is therefore critical.
Ensuring effective privacy protections and information
security protocols that meet the unique needs
and expectations of young people is important for
their flourishing and safety, but also to realize a more
inclusive democracy for all of us.
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This article aims to fill some of this gap, by providing
an analysis of privacy, especially privacy in a
commercial digital context, from young people's perspectives
around the world. It also makes a critical
contribution to relevant knowledge by developing a
set of guiding policy principles about privacy from
young people's perspectives that may be important
to both technologists and policymakers working on
privacy protection and information security.
Methods
Using mixed methods, we engaged young people
aged 10-18 years old in four locations: 1) Accra in
Ghana; 2) multiple places across Slovenia; 3) Saint
John's in Antigua and Barbuda; and 4) Sydney in
Australia. These sites were chosen to: 1) allow some
international comparisons between young people's
perspectives emerging from Western, Educated,
Industrial, Rich, Democratic (WEIRD) contexts, and
non-WEIRD contexts and 2) engage with emerging
policy and technological debates about privacy and
trustworthy tech that were happening in each location.
The impact was prioritized in this research, and
the aim was to generate insightful, youth-led discussions
capable of catalyzing change in each location.
Below, we discuss the common and divergent
features of each site, to help understand the nature
of the data captured.
Common research methods
This research began from an understanding
that the perspectives of young people are valuable
but underrecognized. Given this, we use participatory
methods, allowing young people to shape
the research agenda. We also engaged a mixed
method, using many youth-friendly activities, like
hypothetical and " real " scenarios, which have successfully
been used in research around young people
and privacy [4], [5].
Qualitatively, a series of deliberative workshops
were held, with activities designed to culminate in
the creation of a set of principles that participants
felt should govern the use of their private information.
These workshops included four key activities as
follows.
1) Workshopping and discussing their data footprint,
including what sorts and how much personal
data about young people was collected
in their current digital environment. Activities
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IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - March 2023

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