Data and privacy literacy: the role of the school in educating children in a datafied society

Abstract

This chapter draws on the project “Children's data and privacy online: growing up in a digital age”, funded by the UK's data protection authority. It takes a child‐centered approach, prioritizing children's voices, experiences, and rights within a wider framework of evidence‐based policy development. Children's digital literacy plays an important part in how children understand, manage, and safeguard their privacy. The chapter presents a table that provides a summary of the results of the systematic evidence mapping of recent empirical research on children's understanding of their privacy online. It suggests that children give considerable thought to interpersonal privacy, although they may struggle with how to negotiate sharing or withholding personal information in networked contexts that demand they trade privacy for opportunities for participation, self‐expression, and belonging. Improving children's data and privacy literacy is a demanding media education task in its own right.