Digital playgrounds: Growing up in the surveillance age

Surveillance has always been a feature of childhood. However, recent ¬ technological innovations have enabled the monitoring of young people to reach unprecedented levels of intensity and ubiquity. Children now find themselves navigating a network of surveillance devices that attempt to identify, quantify, sort and track their thoughts, movements and actions. This collection explores surveillance practices across multiple spheres of childhood and youth, from birth to adulthood. Numerous surveillance apparatus and tools are examined, including, but not ¬imited l to, mobile phones, surveillance cameras, online monitoring and GPS tracking. In addition to chronicling the steady rise of such surveillance practices, the chapters in this volume identify and problematise the consequences of technological surveillance from a range of multidisciplinary perspectives. Bringing together leading scholars working across diverse fields – including health, education, ¬ sociology, ¬ anthropology, philosophy, criminology, media and information technology – the collection draws together a range of perspectives on the social and ethical impacts of technological surveillance throughout childhood and youth.