Children and the Data Cycle: Rights and Ethics in a Big Data World

TL;DR

This paper emphasizes the importance of integrating child rights and ethics into data science, especially in big data environments, to protect children from potential long-term harms and ensure their rights are upheld.

Contribution

It advocates for incorporating child rights into global data ethics debates and outlines steps for stakeholders to better protect children's interests in data practices.

Findings

Children constitute one-third of global internet users.

Current data ethics frameworks inadequately address children's rights.

A call for stronger stakeholder collaboration on child rights in data science.

Abstract

In an era of increasing dependence on data science and big data, the voices of one set of major stakeholders - the world's children and those who advocate on their behalf - have been largely absent. A recent paper estimates one in three global internet users is a child, yet there has been little rigorous debate or understanding of how to adapt traditional, offline ethical standards for research, involving data collection from children, to a big data, online environment (Livingstone et al., 2015). This paper argues that due to the potential for severe, long-lasting and differential impacts on children, child rights need to be firmly integrated onto the agendas of global debates about ethics and data science. The authors outline their rationale for a greater focus on child rights and ethics in data science and suggest steps to move forward, focussing on the various actors within the data chain including data generators, collectors, analysts and end users. It concludes by calling for a much stronger appreciation of the links between child rights, ethics and data science disciplines and for enhanced discourse between stakeholders in the data chain and those responsible for upholding the rights of children globally.