Surveillance Capitalism: The Harm to Childhood, The Insufficiency of Parental Consent And The Consequent Impermissibility

Abstract

Today, children are embedded actors in an unprecedented economic system called surveillance capitalism. It profits from exploiting their data to manipulate and direct their future behaviour. What’s more, this economic system is not inherently unlawful. According to current legislation, though children cannot themselves consent, if parental consent is given, surveillance capitalism in the lives of children is permissible. In this paper I show that the current legislation allows for outcomes that are morally wrong. I first cast doubt on the possibility of valid parental consent by challenging whether, in the context of surveillance capitalism, consent can really ever be properly informed. I then show that even if valid parental consent is possible, it is not sufficient to be morally transformative. Considering a wider set of contexts, I argue that parental consent is sufficient for an action only if the benefits associated with that action surpass the risks for the child. Building on an authorship-based account of what it means to ‘be a child’, I then show that the benefits of surveillance capitalism do not surpass the risks because this economic system both interferes with a child’s development of authorship and fails to reflect their absence of authorship. Parental consent, for surveillance capitalism, is therefore insufficient.