Faculty of Enterprise and Humanities.

Department of Entrepreneurship.
Continuous Assessment Cover Sheet.

STUDENT NAME: Yuri Gulevski

PROGRAMME (circle as appropriate): DL909

YEAR (circle as appropriate): 2017

MODULE: Data Management

ASSESSMENT:

MY/OUR WORD COUNT: c. 2217

LECTURER: Audrey Stenson

I / we have read the IADT plagiarism policy and procedures and I / we declare that this
report / essay / project is my / our own original work. (Please circle I / We as
appropriate).

SIGNED: Yuri Gulevski

DATE: 12/04/2017
Once you begin to understand what big data is, you start seeing it everywhere. I think I am
like that right now. Big data is everywhere. When given a task of writing an essay on big
data, I thought that shouldnt be too hard, because we are surrounded by it. Its in the air,
in our homes, cars, in our pockets. But then, what should I talk about that is of most interest
and importance? Would it be Trump and Putins hand in American election 2016? No, not
engaging enough. Vulnerability of cloud storage? Not even close. The extent of Facebooks
knowledge about every aspect of its users lives? Its worrying, but theres so much written
on this topic, people are tired of it, even desensitized to a degree. What is way more
important in all this big data buzz? Kids. Of course its our children. So in this essay I will be
discussing big data from a parents perspective.

Even before baby leaves mothers womb, it has already being monitored for its heart rate,
pulse, whether it may have any potential defects or illnesses, etc. Unborn persons digital
footprint is already there. My sister-in-law who lives in Estonia gave birth to a child in
February this year. Sadly, my little niece only lived for 2 hours and died on the same night.
Its agonizingly painful for young mother and father, for all the family and close friends. The
strangest thing in all of this is the fact that I have a picture of the new-born in my phone.
Whenever I want I can see her little face and miniature fingers. Her journey on this earth
only lasted for 2 hours, yet there exists a digital file with her name on it, with photographs,
medical records and other data. The person is gone, but its dossier became a part of all that
big data mass.

In Western world, in majority of cases where babies are born and are in good health, their
digital file grows at a remarkable pace. Within hours and days of birth huge number of
photos and videos are taken and uploaded online. There also exists a whole subcategory of
parenting apps that add huge amount of data to a new persons digital record. These apps
control and store information about babys growth, its sleep patterns, how often and how
well theyre feeding, when their medications were last given, and so on. It can be easily
distributed and shared with others too. This data may prove very useful and valuable in
future. Combined with hospitals medical history records and analysed, it can help cut query
and waiting times, find solutions more quickly and provide much better care for patients.

This is a small example drawn from first couple of years of human life which demonstrates
how big data is useful and has huge potential benefits. Another sample of big datas
undisputable advantages for children in modern society is given by Wojciech Wiewirowski,
Assistant European Data Protection Supervisor, who paints a picture of a six-year old child
that has crossed the Mediterranean Sea in an inflatable boat, fleeing the horrors of war, and
safely arriving on the coasts of the EU. It is uncertain whether shell be allowed to stay, but
the child will give her fingerprints to be registered as an asylum seeker as soon as she
arrives. Collecting and storing a persons biometric data is a matter of fundamental rights
to which persons seeking asylum in the EU are entitled as much as any EU citizen, he says.
(EDPS, 2016)

There is more to big data, of course. As Kenneth Cukier suggests, its important and will help
to feed people, supply them with medical care, supply them with energy, electricity, and to
make sure they're not burnt to a crisp because of global warming. (TED, 2014) Likewise,
UNICEFs official website states that data, although cannot change the world by itself,
however, makes change possible by identifying needs, supporting advocacy, and gauging
progress.(UNICEF, 2017) There is no doubt that in many cases collection, analysis and use
of data for children is necessary and must be encouraged.

Nevertheless, with new possibilities come new challenges and concerns. Data is being
collected on children all the time, online and offline, whether they are aware of it or not,
and chances are that parents cannot possibly keep up with it. According to the UK
communications regulator OfComs annual Communications Market Report 2016, seven in
ten parents of 12-15 year olds say that their child knows more about the internet than they
do. The same report specifies that one aspect of childrens online use that is of the most
unease to parents is companies collecting information about what their child does online.
(See Fig. 1 in appendix) 42% of parents expressed strong concern in relation to that. (Ofcom,
2016)
Within popular discourse, children and young people are usually considered to be marching
at the avant-garde of the digital revolution. But is it really so, and does that mean that they
are in control?
Major part of all collected personal data on children comes from one or another form of
Internet usage, but there other ways too. United Nations Childrens Fund report Every
Child Counts, for example, specifies that it draws on diverse datasets from satellite
imagery, traffic sensors, social media, the blogosphere, online searches, mobile banking and
hotline usage. (UNICEF, 2014) No wonder the big issues of data collection and analytics
today are the ethical question and privacy/confidentiality. Especially when it comes to
children, who do not always have a clear understanding of these matters.

One example from Growing Up Digital, a report released in January 2017 by the UK
Childrens Commissioner, testifies to that fact. Childrens Commissioner asked privacy law
experts at legal firm Schillings to rewrite Instagrams terms of service in child-friendly
language. (Fig.2) Instagram was chosen because its estimated that more than a half of all
British 12- to 15-year-olds and around 43% of 8- to 11-year-olds have accounts on that
platform. Original Terms and Conditions document is 17 pages and near 5000 words, and
only people with postgraduate levels of education can properly understand it, according to
the report. Having read new simplified version on the user agreement, children were
surprised, to say the least. Most teenagers indicated that they would have thought twice
about installing and using Instagram if they knew the terms of use beforehand, while some
went as far as to say that they want to delete it because the policy that they had agreed to
without proper knowledge feels wrong.(Growing Up Digital, 2017)

This experiment highlighted the importance of childrens need to understand how Internet
functions, how their data is collected and what it will be used for. No wonder that the
European Data Protection Supervisor Giovanni Buttarelli calls last Aprils adoption by the
European Parliament of the General Data Protection Regulation, quite simply a landmark in
human rights law.(EDPS, 2016) He added that it is the biggest attempt so far by a
legislator to grapple with the realities of global, ubiquitous data in the internet era. These
steps are all about human rights. They are designed to help preserve dignity in the digital
society and in the world of big data.
However, there are more questions that need to be answered in relation to Big Datas
influence on children around the globe and in Ireland. Questions that address the issue of
privacy and consent. Should children have a digital footprint on the internet before they are
mature enough to thoroughly understand and agree to it? Should countless pictures of new-
born and young babies be shared and uploaded to social media platforms, when the child
isnt even aware of them being photographed, for example? Or for older kids, as in
Instagram terms of use experiment, shouldnt there be measures in operation ensuring that
youngsters using social media channels fully understand what they sign up for and the
amount of their personal data they allow to be collected? At the moment, the minimum age
at which a person can agree to have their personal data processed is not defined in the Data
Protection Acts 1988 and 2003. (Data Protection, 2017) Should that be looked into? What is
the role and the responsibility of a parent in all this?

Forecasts are being made that Big Data is set to be inevitably linked to almost every sphere
of modern life within next few years. Most of these developments are very welcome, as
they will serve the humanity better. Nevertheless, as Kenneth Cukier warns, we're going to
need to be careful and take big data and adjust it for our needs, our very human needs. He
also admits that its important to remain the master of this technology, lest we become its
servant. Data editor of The Economist Cukier issues a serious warning here. Especially
when it comes to children, who are more vulnerable than adults, it may be best for parents
to consider what the dangers are and what to do about them, before we let other forces
define it for us. (TED, 2014)

Digital world of data is never static, its developing constantly. An increasing multitude of
apps, platforms, tools and practices are now at hand to collect and examine childrens data,
as well as many databases and devices to circulate that information for various uses. The
sooner parents become aware of this trends, the better. We live in a day of fake news, and
it seems some of parental concerns may be due to facts that a lot of big data information is
sensationalised and unjustly presented in a negative light. However, there are other realistic
and reasonable issues that moms and dads need to be informed and educated about. Some
major childrens rights institutions raise concerns around minors and Internet (which as we
mentioned above is the biggest source of data collected on children), with UNICEF being one
of the leading voices for this problem. One in Three: Internet Governance and Childrens
Rights by UNICEFs office of research presents thorough analysis of problematic areas of
childrens Internet usage, and offers a number of recommendations. (UNICEF, 2016) One of
the report conclusions and says that in the multi-stakeholder context of Internet
governance, parents and children (and their representatives) should be recognized and
included as significant stakeholders. It also emphasises that Internet using minors and their
parents often do not understand the data collected from or held concerning them, whether
directly or indirectly, and little effort is made to adequately inform them. That is one of the
problematic matters about big data, which from parental perspective, I believe, needs to be
addressed.

Post-doctoral researchers from Western Sydney University Teresa Swist and Philippa Collin,
who write on topics of data and childrens rights, tried to answer the following question -
Can the data revolution make a difference in the lives of children and their families? Their
reply was that yes, it certainly can, but for that, they insist, data revolution will need to be
re-thought and re-adjusted predominantly with children, not for them. (Swist and Collin,
2017)The idea is to give them a more central place, to ensure that they do understand what
bid data is, the reasons why it may be useful to collect it and the mechanisms of doing it.
That certainly echoes UNICEFs recommendations and gives more consideration to kids and
their parents. This children-friendly approach is very welcome, as it invites recognition of
children as valid agents of social change. The report ends with a call to examining the
interplay between childrens data, rights and wellbeing in a digital age. (Swist and Collin,
2017) To that I would also add that parents and guardians should also be considered as
another important force in ensuring kids wellbeing and their healthy and safe relationship
with ever-increasing world of big data.

So, should we be concerned about big datas impact on our childrens future? Or should we
embrace it full of optimism without thinking much? Princeton University professor Karen
E.C. Levy ironically describes Big Data as a two-headed creature, the source of both
tremendous promise and disquieting surveillance (Karen E.C. Levy, 2013) and adds that like
any complicated social phenomenon, Big Data is probably both of these, a set of multiple
and complex resources and practices that can be used in many ways for many different
goals. I am convinced that mams and dads should not remain passive when it comes to their
childrens relationship with big data, but should be alert and play a more active role in it.
Perhaps, concluding that parents should remain the final arbiters of all data collection on
their kids of any kind is a little too much, but I will certainly support the view that there
should be a more clear, child-friendly information policy, more education about big data,
more care and protection on a level of legislation, and probably more rights for parents
concerning authorisation and consent for data collection on younger children.

Until we see it implemented, though, it is good to remember the warning of Big Data guru
Kenneth Cukier, who advises all enthusiasts, comparing modern humanity and Big Data, to
primitive man and fire, adding that Big Data is a tool, but this is a tool that, unless we're
careful, will burn us. (Cukier, 2014)
Reference List

- European Data Protection Supervisor, Re-focusing on the human dimension of data

protection, Wojciech Wiewirowski, June 2016. https://edps.europa.eu/press-
publications/press-news/blog/re-focusing-human-dimension-data-protection_en,
accessed on 07/04/2017
- TED, Sept.2014.
https://www.ted.com/talks/kenneth_cukier_big_data_is_better_data/transcript?lan
guage=en, accessed on 05/04/2017
- UNICEF,Is Every Child Counted, March 2017,
https://data.unicef.org/resources/every-child-counted-status-data-children-sdgs/,
accessed on 01/04/2017
- Ofcom, The Communications Market Report 2016, Aug.2016,
https://www.ofcom.org.uk/research-and-data/cmr/cmr16, accessed on 10/04/2017

- UNICEF, State of the Worlds Children, January 2014, published by UNICEF Division of
Communication, New York, ISBN: 978-92-806-4731-0, p. 9

- Growing Up Digital, A report of the Growing Up Digital Taskforce, for Childrens

Commissioner for England, January 2017, London 2017, p. 10, 11. Pdf available:
http://www.childrenscommissioner.gov.uk/publications/growing-digital

- European Data Protection Supervisor, 2016, One giant leap for digital rights,
Giovanni Buttarelli ,Apr. 2016, https://edps.europa.eu/press-publications/press-
news/blog/one-giant-leap-digital-rights_en, accessed on 07/04/2017

- Data Protection Acts 1988 and 2003, Informal Consolidation, full document available
 https://www.dataprotection.ie/docs/Data-Protection-Acts-1988-and-2003:-
Informal-Consolidation/796.htm, accessed 12/-4/2017

- UNICEF, One in Three: Internet Governance and Childrens Rights, January 2016,
published by UNICEF Office of Research Innocenti, Discussion Paper 2016-01, p. 28

- Teresa Swist and Philippa Collin, Platforms, data and childrens rights: Introducing a
networked capability approach, Western Sydney University, Australia, 2017.

- Karen E.C. Levy, Relational Big Data, Princeton University, 2013

- Children's and Young People's Rights in the Digital Age | IAMCR-

https://iamcr.org/leicester2016/preconf/youth-digital-rights-cfp, accessed on
8/04/2017
Appendix

Figure 1: Parents concerns about companies collecting data on their children online
Appendix (continued)

Figure 2:
Instagram policy in child-friendly language, ordered Childrens Commissioner for Uk