04/09/2023
🌟 We’re immensely grateful for the outpouring of support for our mission to bring vital data literacy to children worldwide through our magical book series!
😮 Why are we here together? 13 Years ago, many of you will remember, this happened:
Target used data analytics to identify products that could indicate a customer was pregnant, and they would then send that customer targeted advertisements and coupons for baby items.
While well-intentioned for marketing purposes, this backfired severely when a teenage girl's father received the pregnancy-related advertisements at home before the daughter shared the news with her family.
You might think a long time has passed and a lot has changed (right?), but has enough changed 🤔 ?
· Stories continue to emerge about companies testing or misusing kids' data in questionable ways (e.g. Facebook, TikTok). In 2021 alone, six significant platforms paid fines totalling over $15 million for illegally collecting data on children.
· The types of data collected have expanded from just browsing history to include social media activity, location data, biometrics and more. Research shows over 90% of apps share kids' sensitive data like locations and phone identifiers with third parties.
· Most schools still do not educate children on how their data is harnessed, leaving them uninformed and vulnerable. Only 24% of teachers report feeling confident covering data privacy topics in their classrooms.
Get involved now. Together we can create a future where kids understand and control their digital lives. Back to our mission to put data knowledge into children's hands and spread the word, we’re revolutionizing the approach to data literacy 🤗
