“Please Just Ask Me.”: Aware and Intentional Use of Digital Images of Children

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Friday 11:45 am - Gold 2
  In Roundtable Session: AI in Early Childhood: Posthuman Perspectives on Digital Practices Across Children’s Geographies

Abstract

Purpose: In an era increasingly shaped by AI and digital technologies, it is essential to uphold and protect children's rights regarding digital images. Children are not passive subjects in the digital world. They are active participants whose identities, privacy, and futures are shaped by how AI captures, shares, and processes their images. As facial recognition/profiling technologies become more sophisticated, potential for misuse, bias, and long-term digital footprints grows, making it imperative that children understand and consent to how their images are captured, disseminated, used.

Theoretical framework: Using interdisciplinary understandings of digital literacy (Martin, 2008)--childhood studies (Rinaldi, 2014), language arts ​​(Souto‐Manning et al., 2021) health (Madigan et al., 2020)--the role of digital images in children’s lives is examined. Centring children’s insights and understandings of capture, alterations and dissemination of digital images are examined alongside how they can shape how images are used. It also considers the ethical responsibilities of adults (including educators, parents, policymakers) in supporting children’s agency and informed digital-decision-making. Children’s choice/voice is central to navigating an AI-mediated childhood to empower children in critically engaging with the technologies that increasingly define contemporary life.

Methods and data sources: This study draws on participatory research/community interactions with children and their adults at a children’s museum on a university campus, serving as a living-social-lab and public-access playspace. Scenarios are posed by families and discussed with a children’s advisory group (aged 4, 6, 11 and 12 years) to gather perspectives. The paper draws data from a scenario focused on the capture of digital images, issues of consent, and dissemination on social media platforms. The scenario, while initiated by adults, was discussed by the children’s advisory group before being illustrated by a 12-year-old child. These perspectives then informed children’s workshops to understand how images can be altered in digital environments (20 workshops, 162 children).

Findings and discussion: Data enables examination of consent for generating and sharing images alongside the rights of the child and the complexity of interdisciplinary understandings of digital literacy. Children’s rights to digital inclusion, terms of engagement for the use of images in digital environments, and effective digital literacy practices for children’s active participation are examined.

Scholarly and scientific significance: The interdisciplinary discussion of digital literacy brings together the fields of childhood studies, language arts and health to critically examine how children understand the production of digital images in an era shaped by facial recognition and algorithmic technologies (Ragnedda, 2018). It expands the concept of digital literacy to include children's awareness of the invisible systems that govern image capture, use, and dissemination, positioning children as active participants in digital environments (Pangrazio, 2016). By centring children's voices/agency, the work contributes to a growing body of literature advocating for participatory and rights-based approaches to technology. The children’s advisory board and artifacts from workshops illustrate their understandings. Through insights for educators, parents, and policymakers, ethical guidelines and educational practices are offered to empower children to navigate AI-mediated spaces with awareness and intention for more ethically responsible digital futures.

Author

• Lisa K Kervin, University of Wollongong