By Charles Sosnik
I have long written about children’s privacy and the growing risks that digital data poses for young people. Recent conversations with college admissions professionals confirm what many parents fear: publicly available—and sometimes private—digital information can heavily influence life-changing decisions. Admissions officers told me that high school grades, activities, and test scores still matter, but up to 60 percent of an admission decision’s weight can come from the information that is discoverable online. A student’s social media posts and other digital footprints are increasingly part of that calculus.
A New Economy of Information and Children’s Privacy
We live in an economy where information is the most valuable commodity. Technology companies that excel at gathering and analyzing data have become the world’s most valuable firms in a single decade. What matters today is not oil or cars, but data—detailed information about people’s lives, behaviors, and preferences. The consequence is that companies collect data aggressively, and children are not exempt.
Current U.S. law places the age of consent for online data collection at 13 under the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA). That means children between 13 and 18 have far fewer legal protections than many people expect, and data collected from children under 13 is often retained and later used as those children grow older. This persistent storage of childhood data can have long-term consequences.
Marsali Hancock, CEO of the EP3 Foundation, stresses that we still do not fully understand the value of data or how it will be used through a child’s lifetime. Data about a child can come from many sources—devices, schools, applications, and networks—and that information will be available for decades. A student’s searches, shared content, and online activities are not necessarily private or anonymous; they are recorded, discoverable, and accessible to many entities. This online identity can be used by companies and organizations to make predictive decisions—about who might succeed in certain careers, qualify for loans, or be accepted into programs. Those decisions can profoundly shape a young person’s future depending on who has access to the information and how they use it.
Put simply, many digital traces from childhood do not disappear. A 12-year-old’s online behavior can follow them into adulthood, and algorithms can sort and judge people based on lifelong digital records. As the labor market shifts toward freelance and contract work for global companies, the datasets algorithms use to screen, rank, and hire workers will matter more than ever. Early-life struggles or mistakes that seem inconsequential can be discovered and weighed against a person’s opportunities later in life.
Education’s Role: Balancing Data Use and Protection
I am not arguing that educational systems should avoid collecting data entirely. In fact, thoughtful data collection can improve learning. Modern personalized learning platforms route educational resources and adaptive courseware based on student performance and needs. Collecting certain types of data is necessary to personalize instruction, accelerate learning, and deliver engaging, effective educational experiences.
However, it is essential to distinguish between data that is required for learning and data that is commercially valuable but unnecessary for education. Schools and edtech providers must implement strict limits on how personal student data is stored, shared, and monetized. The technology to protect and anonymize sensitive information already exists; the challenge is adopting policies and practices that enforce those protections consistently.
Leaders working with school systems emphasize the practical potential of personalized education: parents and children already use search engines, educational apps, and voice-command devices to learn at home. Children often arrive at school having already mastered parts of the early curriculum through apps and online content. That same personalization can and should continue in the classroom, but it must be built with strong privacy safeguards so that only the data necessary for learning is used and long-term commercial exposure of a student’s life story is prevented.
Market pressures increase the temptation to collect and monetize student data. Every app and platform often seeks more information than it needs. Even programs that claim to comply with privacy protections may fall short in practice. Without clear boundaries and robust enforcement, student data collected for educational use risks being exploited for commercial purposes or to shape a young person’s future in ways that are neither transparent nor fair.
We already create vast amounts of data: the last two years alone generated the overwhelming majority of all digital information in human history. This scale of data creation means that parents, educators, and policymakers must take responsibility for understanding who collects that data, how it is used, and how to limit its long-term impact on children’s lives. Become informed, ask questions about every app and service your child uses, and insist on meaningful controls over data collection and sharing.
What Parents and Educators Can Do
• Learn the basics of student data privacy and the laws that apply.
• Review the apps and services your children use and require clear, written assurances about data practices.
• Advocate for school policies that separate instructional data needs from commercial data collection.
• Support solutions that anonymize and secure student data while enabling personalized learning.
These steps can reduce the long-term risks while preserving the benefits that responsible use of educational data can deliver.
About the Author
Charles Sosnik is a columnist and education journalist. He lives in Gastonia, North Carolina, and writes frequently about education and technology for outlets focused on educational innovation and policy. He is an education fellow with the EP3 Foundation and contributes regularly to education-focused publications.