Kids and Surveillance Capitalism

One of the great concerns regarding the growing presence and use of Artificial Intelligence has been labeled as “surveillance capitalism” by writer Shoshana Zuboff. Zuboff defines surveillance capitalism as a system that claims human experience as free raw material for translation into behavioral data. AI takes this raw material, analyzes it, and then harnesses it to nudge, coax, tune, and herd behavior toward profitable outcomes. As it relates to your kids, think of it this way. They spend lots of time online, becoming addicted to social media platforms designed to addict them. Data on their online behavior is consistently collected, as they are being watched. Profiles of your kids are then created from that data, and then sold to companies and marketers who want to reach them with something to sell. In other words, the online attention of our kids is being commodified, which in turn commodifies our kids. Parents, this is just one more caution you need to heed.