The quantified child: discourses and practices of dataveillance in different life stages

The notion of the quantified self stems from the use of wearable smart devices and tracking apps. These technologies increasingly include monitoring apps or wearable technologies assisting parents in tracking their children’s health, or emotion-maximising educational apps that measure and gamify children’s educational achievement. Together with Internet of Things toys, self-tracking apps and devices concur to the datafication of children’s play, learning and health. Therefore, concerns have been raised as to whether these developments take into account children’s rights or respect their developmental, cognitive and emotional needs The chapter examines the emergent research on children’s self-tracking apps and wearables, and identifies key themes in the future research agenda, namely: the implications of these tools for children’s embodied experiences and literacy practices; the risks for children’s privacy rights and data security; the changes in parent-child and teacher-child relationships; the consequences of neoliberal self-tracking and the new politics of the body for children’s development and self-identity.