Spy Kids Too: Encounters with surveillance through games and play

As modes of surveillance become more digitised, it will be difficult for children to escape or resist the network of data-capture that pervades the spaces they inhabit. They will also have to make decisions about the opportunities they are presented with to ‘look into’ the lives of others. In this context, it is important to explore how children come to understand the practice of surveillance and what it means to be both the watched and the watcher. How might children respond to the social, privacy and ethical implications of these new spaces and relations? Focusing on childhood play, this chapter takes up these issues by looking at the ways that particular games open up spaces where children can grapple with issues such as power, exposure, secrecy and deception.